When I first heard of Steve Hili’s 121 Challenge I didn’t think much of it. I thought it was another one of Steve Hili’s jokes and fobbed it off with the rest of the useless stuff I see on Facebook.

You see, I’ve always thought of myself as a low maintenance and not very exigent kind of person, so in my head, living on €1.21 a day, which is what Steve Hili set out to do for a whole week, didn’t seem like such a big deal… until I tried it….

Last Monday I woke up (still thinking that it would be easy) and challenged myself to live on €1.21 for 24 hours.  If silly Steve can do, I can do it too, I thought.

The first thing that hit me was that on that budget, I couldn’t even have my two cups of tea – something that for the past twenty years have become such a morning ritual that without them, I can’t sincerely call myself human. 

But, the mineral water, the teabags and the milk I’d need for even one cup of tea would have drained my budget almost by a fourth.  So I passed up the tea, and soon enough, I already started feeling like a monster. How did I ever think that I wasn’t exigent?

By noon I was famished because for breakfast I had also passed up one of my usual two eggs. At around 2pm someone at work offered me a biscuit and whereas I’d usually refuse processed sugar, this time I accepted (not so gracefully) and gobbled it up like my life depended on it. Given that the biscuit was a ‘donation’ I’m not sure whether I should have counted it as part of my budget, but I didn’t.

I’m ashamed to say that the sugar low that hit me a few minutes after I devoured that blessed biscuit, broke the last iota of determination that I had inside me. When I realized that I had resorted to accepting processed sugar in the form of a chocolate covered biscuit which I didn’t even like and that is even bad for my health, I threw in the towel and resorted to a healthy lunch consisting of quinoa, chicken and beetroots.

I soon realized that by the fifth bite of my healthy lunch, I had already run out of my daily budget of €1.21 and was still looking forward to the rest of my meal.  At that point, had anyone tried to take that plate away from me I would have bitten their hand off.

Steve Hili and his wife have by now finished their week-long challenge. Steve’s celebratory meal was a kebab, which cost him triple his daily budget. In order to keep to their budget they had to resort to drinking tap water, and eating mostly bread, pasta and rice. 

By the third day of the challenge, happy, jolly, Steve was already feeling sluggish and depressed, but Jamie Oliver’s support that came in the form of cheap recipe ideas did perk him up a little.

“Constantly thinking about what we can buy and eat is exhausting in itself,” said Steve, “and eating so little just makes you want to sleep all the time. Perhaps we should not be so quick to judge when poor people seem unmotivated to work. I started feeling lethargic and wanting to sleep more after just a few days of this diet, let alone a lifetime.”

Steve’s 121 challenge was inspired by the global ‘Live Below the Line Movement’ which aims to raise awareness about the 1.2 billion people around the world who live in extreme poverty. “I knew we would survive on €1.21 a day,” explained Steve, “the idea was not to die but to live and to chronicle how poverty affects lives.”

According to 2013 data, poverty in Malta is on the increase. According to the EU’s statistics, about 23 per cent of the population are at risk of poverty and social exclusion and, though this figure is slightly less than the EU average it still means that there are over 60,000 Maltese people living in serious poverty.

Steve, his wife, and a few friends are also trying to collect funds to support a medical centre, which the group set up in Cambodia in 2008. To date they’ve collected close to €3000 and they’re likely to have lost as much in calories and nutrients, so please do help out by donating online https://www.betternow.org/mt/amplify

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