By Elizabeth Willoughby on
“What is unique to our time is that our generation, for the first time in all of human history, can say that we can end extreme poverty,” says Jeffrey Sachs in a Live Below the Line clip.
Live Below the Line is a campaign that challenges people to live on $1.50 per day (the extreme poverty line) for five days.
Participants sign up at the Live Below the Line website, pledge a fundraising dollar amount goal and choose to which partner charity the money will be donated.
Musician Josh Groban took the challenge last month and raised $6,845, in fourth place on the US Leaderboard. Hunter Biden, US vice president Joe Biden's son, is in second place with $18,170.
Actor and activist Ben Affleck also took up the challenge for a day and wrote about why he wanted to bring attention to the cause on the Huffington Post blog.
“The US has five percent of the world’s population and 35 percent of global wealth,” wrote Affleck. "More egregiously, the bottom half of the world has only one percent of the world’s wealth; that’s more than three billion people in the other “one percent”.
“As a nation we both claim a noble position in the world and assert a reputation for fostering freedom, human rights and fairness here and abroad. If indeed we are to live up to that, we cannot abide having some among us who starve. Today I engage in the minor act of eating rice and beans to do my tiny part. I encourage others to do whatever they can, however minimal.”
To find out how you can help, visit the Live Below the Line website.
Copyright © 2013 Look to the Stars
