Wheaton Resident Raises Poverty Awareness Living on $1.50 a Day

Wheaton resident Ashley Luse has gotten through an entire week living on less than $10 in groceries in an effort to raise money and awareness for Opportunity International, an organization focused on ending global poverty through microfinance. 

Luse appeared on CBS Chicago last week to talk about the five-day "Live Below the Line" challenge to live on $1.50 a day—the U.S. equivalent of the extreme poverty line, according to the Live Below the Line website.

"There are 1.5 billion people across the world who are not opting into a five-day challenge but this is a daily reality. They're forced to live under the international proverty line," she told CBS.

She wrote in a blog post on her Live Below the Line profile, "This experience has shaken my perspective. I now have a deeper appreciation for the complex food system that I have access to: products that are further along the value-chain that save prep-time for little added cost, high-quality foods that provide a high nutritional value, and most noticeably – VARIETY in what I can consume. The fact that I don’t always 'feel' like having rice and beans wouldn’t make any difference if that truly were my family’s only meal option."

Watch the CBS Chicago video online here.

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