There’s a saying that most people eat to live and that some live to eat. I am a proud, dedicated member of the latter group. So you can imagine how hard it was for me to Live Below the Line.
Living below the line was a fundraising campaign that I participated in last year where I had a £1 per day food budget – the equivalent of the extreme poverty line – for 5 days. All the money raised went to The Hunger Project. Click here to learn more about the campaign and the organisation I supported.
Now, when I say “hard” I mean first-world-problems-hard. As in I-didn’t-get-my-daily-salmon-avocado-and-skinny-cappucino-hard. I realized after the week, how good I have it and how lucky I am to never have to worry about having food on the table. It was such a good experience both in terms of working towards trying to understand the problem that affects a huge part of the population and trying to raise not only funds but awareness. However, it wasn’t until today, that it hit me that even though I’ve completed the Live Below the Line campaign, I can still do my part in the fight against hunger and extreme poverty.
I was inspired by the clean water campaign supported by Food for Thought – a cafe that not only serves a mean iced latte, but is also very driven in raising awareness about extreme poverty.
While I was happily sipping on my third cup of free flow water after my contribution to the campaign, I thought to myself “wouldn’t it be great if they could do the same with food – if I could donate a set sum towards a cause to end world hunger and then get free flow food.” My gluttony aside, the more I thought about it, the more I found that it wasn’t such a bad idea.
My watercolour painting of a pineapple in my everything book entitled “painting my hunger away” came to mind – during the week of living below the line, I had spent a lot of my time trying to distract myself from my hunger pangs by painting. I got to thinking that maybe I could in some way not only paint my hunger away, but paint hunger away in general.
Though I know that’s impossible, I figured that a little goes a long way. I have no idea how this is going to turn out but you never know if you don’t try right?
So that’s the inception of my Painting the Hunger Away project. I’ll be painting food (the first food item being the oh so glorious pineapple) and my art pieces will be available for purchase here as art prints, canvas prints, pillows, t-shirts, clocks, phone cases – basically anything you can think of. All proceeds will go to The Hunger Project, committed to the sustainable end of world hunger.
I’m so excited about combining my two favourite things in the world to make a change – or attempting to anyways. Well that’s it for now, I’ll keep you guys updated about how it goes!
lots of pineapple love, Tiff
feuillettte 