Live on $10 a day
by Cheung Ka Hung (4A)

Last week, my family and I decided to take part in a campaign called ‘Live on $10 a Day’, as it provided an opportunity for us to understand poverty and hunger.

In the morning, the campaign volunteers gave each of us $10.  As there are three people in my family, our total food budget was $30. Then, we started the activities on our own. We avoided doing sports and walking too fast because we did not want to sweat, as otherwise, we would have to spend money on drinking water.  Thus, we walked as slow as a snail in the morning. When we felt tired, we sat on a bench in a park and listened to pop music on our MP3 player.  At that moment, I felt more relaxed than before since I could forget my studies temporarily.

Smelling the sweet flavour from some food stalls in the street, we were famished and thought it was time to have lunch. However, I couldn’t move and my legs were shaking heavily. I had never felt hungry and thirsty like that so I wanted to have lunch at once. Soon, we stopped in front of a restaurant. We looked at the menu and realized that there was nothing cheaper than $30. Therefore, we left desperately. Then we walked into a bakery and purchased three buns which cost us $12 in total. That meant we just had $18 left for our dinner.  While eating bread, my tears were dropping because I felt ashamed and I deeply understood the life of those living in poverty.  When they were worried whether they had enough money to have three meals a day, I was so ignorant that I produced lots of food waste every day.

After lunch, I was still hungry.  I felt pity for those who could not have regular meals every day.  ‘Let’s go!  We should drink water immediately if we want to live.’ shouted Dad.  We spent $3 on a bottle of water that we shared between us.  Now we had $15 left for our dinner.  Night was coming soon. I had just eaten a bun and drank a little water from morning till now.  We went back to the bakery. ‘Sorry, we just have enough money to have bread for dinner.’ whispered Mom.  Finally, we could only afford to buy three slices of bread and a bottle of water.

Through this campaign, I learned that we should be thankful about what we eat and we should think twice before wasting food.  It is also essential to help people in poverty.  We can donate some money or even food to the organizations concerned or start volunteering at a local charity to help distribute food to the hungry.  Moreover, I hope the Government can be more aware of poverty and raise awareness of citizens so that more people can work together to reduce this problem.