Tuesday, July 10, 2012

day 28: we're doing this!

In response to yesterday's appeal to give this one final push, you all went crazy and started the uprising. I love you, and these kids love you. My favorite donation today was a $5 gift. God bless you, sister. That right there, a $5 donation says loud and clear to me, "I can't do much, but dang it, I'm going to do something." If only everyone could say that, there would be no poverty in the world. But sadly, most shrug their shoulders and walk on down the dark tunnel of indifference and defeatism.

Thanks to our collective voice raising awareness across the internet, we raised a total of $1,880 today! This brings our total up to $7,405--enough to cover 14 scholarships for children of the Indian slums, and just $95 short of what we need for the 15th scholarship. This is stunningly incredible news and I'm absolutely humbled by your support toward our mutual goal--to see these kids rescued from a life of child labor in the trash heaps. Through our united effort, we're literally removing kids from circumstances like that seen in my photo below, from the slums of Hyderabad, India. This is a colony that sits right on top of one of the city's trash dumps.


I feel the momentum, and I don't believe it's going to stop here. With your continued support, I think we can take this up to 20 scholarships in the next 48 hours! Let's go! We just need $2,595!

For those of you joining the blog late, let me give you a quick run-down on what it is we're trying to do here. I'm living on $30 of food (total, one grocery run for $30) for 30 days, all the while going barefoot, so that I can try to empathize with some aspects of the struggle of the slum dwellers of the developing world. They're known to live on only about $1 a day, and most go barefoot due to their extreme poverty.

My goal is to raise awareness, and from this, raise funds for our (Peace Gospel International's) children's slum outreach center, "The Children's Hope Center" in Hyderabad, India. Hyderabad is India's fourth largest city at 8 million residents, and over 1,400 slum colonies. For $500, we're able to bring a child out of a child labor situation (convincing their parents or guardians that it's better for us to enroll them in school and cover most of their living expenses than for any meager benefit they would receive from putting their child to work).

At The Children's Hope Center, we equip them with everything they need to enroll in one of the local schools we've partnered with--we give them uniforms, new shoes (their first pair ever), backpacks, school supplies, hygiene supplies (most do not own toothbrushes), and then after school they come to the center for tutoring and computer literacy classes! They also receive healthy snacks and one fresh-cooked meal per day. If any medical conditions arise, we treat those too. All together, for $500, we're able to equip one of these children for everything they need to succeed in school and to stay healthy. Here's a picture of what this "fruit" looks like:


So, what do you think? Are you in? Let's do this! Spread the word, please share this blog on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, wherever and however you can. We've got 48 hours to come up with $2,595 to bring our total up to 20 children rescued from child labor and enrolled into The Children's Hope Center! Any amount makes a difference! Please donate any amount, seriously-- $1, $5, $10--whatever you can afford, it's all adding up, just look at this total again: $7,405 in 28 days!

I've already informed our team in India of this great news (they're following along on the blog as well), and just today our they were busy at work informing families of the children on our wait list that their kids are going to be able to go to school this year! I've already started receiving some of the photos of these new kids and I cannot wait to share them with you on day 30!

On to the recap of what I was able to cook up for $1 today. Thanks to your incredible support, I continue to find inspiration to remain creative with the few ingredients I have to work with. All rations are holding steady, and in fact, I've got more than I need thanks to being conservative on the front end of the challenge! 

Breakfast. The tostada is still working wonders for me. Here, a breakfast variation with re-fried beans, brown rice and one scrambled egg, seasoned with pepper and season-all. Delicious, seriously. With the standard oatmeal and raisins, it really helps you make it to lunch.


Lunch. If I could just brag a little bit here, I was really excited with the outcome of this one. I've saved up a few extra corn tortillas so I splurged with 3 taquitos today. On a brainstorm, I took a gamble on spooning a raw beaten egg into the taquitos before baking. Ingredients were re-fried beans, brown rice, chopped carrots and the raw beaten egg rolled into canola-oil basted corn tortillas. If you'd like to try this, be sure to microwave the tortillas before preparing so that they're pliant and won't crumble upon rolling. Turn them over, seam-side down and place in the oven at 500F/260C for 8 minutes. The corn tortillas ended up absorbing the egg to create an amazing texture and flavor unique to the past 28 days. With some extra pasta sauce I've been rationing, I was able to create a pizza flavor by topping them with the sauce and seasonings. I bring you... "taquito pizza rolls"--cost, about 10 cents per taquito!


Dinner. Nothing as fancy as lunch, but some delicious noodle fried rice with chopped cabbage. You can't go wrong with this as long as you prepare with the right amount of pepper and seasonings. Satisfying, for about 33 cents!


Take Action!

1) Please consider giving toward scholarships for children of the Indian slums. We surpassed our initial goal of $5,000 to cover 10 scholarships, but I want to keep going to see if we can reach 20! Every little bit helps!

2) Please visit my unofficial sponsor, Amazon.com through this link. 7% of your purchases made through the link are given to Peace Gospel. If you're in the UK, use this link.


3) If you're compelled by my effort here, please share it with friends. One of the main goals is awareness. So if you can help with that, huge.

4) Leave me feedback. Please comment on this post, especially if you have any ideas about what I should try to cook with these ingredients I have available. I love hearing from you! It really helps!

No comments:

Post a Comment