When we hear numbers about how many people in the world are sick or dying of starvation, it usually goes in one ear and out the other. It seems like somebody else’s problem, especially to financially humble Midwesterners like us that aren’t rich by the standards of most everyone we know.

However, my wife and I were trying to play a board game recently with the TV on…and our game was ruined by reality. A news report came on about a tragedy happening in Niger, West Africa: 3.6 million people in critical need of food. How did this happen? Swarms of locusts devastated crops throughout the country, followed by drought, followed by flooding. The government of Niger has declared an emergency and was appealing for help. We hadn’t heard about this before!

Since then...whenever I check the news, nearly everything is only about celebrities or recent US news. Don’t get me wrong, 9/11, the Tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina were all horrific things that affected many people. But…they don’t have quite the same ongoing issues like hunger…which kills 24,000 people every day.

We wanted to do something to make a difference, and just recently had heard about the iPAID challenge. So we tried it. For one day we survived off only $1 each. Sound impossible? It isn’t. Nearly 1.2 billion people in the world live off less than a dollar a day EVERY DAY. Read on and I will share how we did it.

Let me be clear, that is just an example of a humbling and simple thing we did to make a genuine difference. Some relief organizations estimate that for every $60 they are sent…13 starving children get to eat. So the first thing we did was pray. Afterwards we got some inspiration from this comparison of funds: With $60 we could purchase another new outfit for our closet…or we could literally save 13 lives.

So recently on a day off, 4 people from my family put our money together and survived for 24 hours. I rode my bike to the store (about 3 miles) to get some peanut butter, bread, and carrots off of our combined $4. It wasn’t the best of culinary days, but we survived and weren’t much worse for the wear.

Afterwards, we sent the money that we would have spent on food, gas, electricity, movie rental, a/c, clothes, water… to a reputable organization that helps get food directly to needy people. I made sure that my 7 and 6 year old boys who participated were standing there with me as I made our online donation…and we prayed together that God would take our meager sacrifice and use it to feed people in need.

Aaron & Marque Babyar
Northwest Arkansas