EMAIL DETAILS

FYI:

U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro and staffers take $1.50-a-day food challenge


By Register Staff

Friday, May 2, 2014
[cid:image001.jpg@01CF6611.C50637F0]

NEW HAVEN >> Surviving on $1.50 a day will get you one meal and few calories.

U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro and six staff members Thursday took the challenge offered by the "Live Below the Line"<https://www.livebelowtheline.com/us/partner/wfpusa> campaign to raise awareness about extreme poverty and hunger.

The campaign is being run through the month of May with World Food Program USA <https://www.livebelowtheline.com/us/partner/wfpusa> and other nonprofits asking communities to see what it is like to eat and drink on $1.50 a day for five days.

The $1.50 is the measure assigned by the World Bank to a level of extreme poverty.

The congresswoman said the six participants combined their funds - $10.50 - to buy peanut butter, jelly, matzo, bananas, bread and tea.

Her one meal, which she spread out through Thursday, consisted of matzo with peanut butter and jelly, tea and three-quarters of a banana.

The World Food Program USA estimated that 1.2 billion people experience this level of poverty.

DeLauro said 1/8th of the world goes to bed hungry every night, a situation that mainly effects women and children.

"They are the last in line," she said.

She said the U.S. contributed $185 million under the McGovern-Dole fund this year to fight hunger.

DeLauro said providing food in schools in countries in poverty is an incentive for parents to allow their daughters to attend, then take the food back home.

"We have the ability, as members of the human race, we have the means, we have the capacity to eliminate hunger from the face of the earth in our lifetime. We need only the will," DeLauro said, quoting President John F. Kennedy at the World Food Congress in 1963.

Live Below the Line <https://www.livebelowtheline.com/us> is an initiative of the Global Poverty Project, which looks to end extreme poverty by 2030.

It said the $1.50 is calculated using purchasing power parity, which works out to how much you would have to live on each day if you were living in the U.S. in extreme poverty.


http://www.nhregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?avis=NH&date 140502&category=NEWS&lopenr0509902&Ref=AR&profile30370&template=printart

Erin Cochran
Communications Director
202.627.3931
ecochran@wfpusa.org<mailto:ecochran@wfpusa.org>

[cid:image002.png@01CF6611.C50637F0]<http://usa.wfp.org/>