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Why I am Living Below the Line

By Ashley Luse

Last week Young Ambassador for Opportunity member Ashley Luse participated in the Live Below the Line Challenge. She shares her motivation below:

Consider this encouraging statistic: The share of people living in extreme poverty in the developing world has been halved in the last 2 decades (from 43 percent in 1990 to 21 percent in 2010). Truly exciting.

But 1.4 billion people across the world still live in extreme poverty. To put that into perspective, 1.4 billion is nearly 5 times the population of the entire US. The World Bank estimates the extreme poverty line to be equivalent to USD $1.50/day. This is an eye-opening reminder because I spent twice that amount on a tiny chai tea latte yesterday!

I am living below the line in honor of those 1.4 billion who are still trapped under the poverty line and in honor of the 2 billion people across the world without access to basic financial services. I am living below the line with the understanding that my generation has the actual possibility of seeing an end to extreme poverty within my lifetime. In fact, The World Bank recently announced an ambitious but achievable agenda for the global community to end extreme poverty by 2030 and to foster income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the population in every country.

Read the full post and other stories from her journey on Ashley’s Live Below the Line profile.

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