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From September 22nd through 28th, the eight executive directors of the Illinois Food Bank Association along with elected officials, community members, and media representatives will be taking part in the $25 Challenge. The challenge is to live off $25 for the duration of this week, which is the average food stamp allocation to recipients in
What does $25 for the entire week really mean?
That is less than $4 a day… and night, let’s not forget that this challenge is intended for more than the work day.
I spent almost $4 for a cup of coffee and a muffin this morning at the coffee shop down the street from the office.
Think about it. In the first two hours of my day I spent almost $4. Two hours to spend more than some people can afford to spend in an entire day… and I am going out to lunch today because I didn’t get around to packing one last night or this morning.
So, that is part one of the challenge. Part two is a challenge to the challenge.
Again with my morning coffee. I know that I could easily not go to the coffee shop before work and still satiate my caffeine need with the pot of coffee that is always waiting in the kitchen next to my desk. So I don’t have to spend the money and I could still get the coffee. Not everyone can do that.
There are a couple of fast-food joints down the street from my apartment where I think I could get pretty cheap meals that would sustain me for a week… except that if I take this seriously, I have to abide by the food stamp restriction against use toward “hot foods ready to eat”.
Or I could think of this as a kind of hunger strike or monastic fasting ritual and live off oatmeal for seven days.
There are all sorts of ways that I could get by on $25 for the entire week. None of them particularly good for me or satisfying, but that is okay because I know that next week I can get back to eating a more nutritious diet and my standard way of living.
So here is part two of the challenge: Try to forget that this is a week-long challenge. Try to keep in mind that this is an ongoing reality for hundreds of thousands of people. I can say to myself, “You just need to make it two more days.” But for this challenge to really meet the goal of expanding an understanding of what it means to live on food stamps, I need to not think of the end of the challenge. I need to think of the challenge as ongoing.
Maybe this will help: If you are a single person with no dependants in order to receive this average of $25 a week in benefits you cannot make more than $1,107 in monthly gross income. Take out your rent, your utilities, transportation… do you have anything left? If you do, then that is what you have to buy all of the things you consume that food stamps won’t cover.
If we really want to understand what it is like to live off on $25 a week in food stamps, we need to realize that we can’t use food stamps to buy everything we need. If you have a pet and you need to buy pet food you need to understand that if you were actually on food stamps, you would not be able to say “Well, this doesn’t count toward my $25 limit for the week because you can’t use food stamps for pet food”, you would just not be able to buy the pet food.
You can’t buy that bottle of wine (even cheap stuff) to congratulate yourself after a long week of holding yourself to an average food stamp allocation because food stamps cannot be used to buy alcohol.
Do you smoke? Sorry, can’t use food stamps for tobacco. And again, this does not mean that the money you spend on a pack of cigarettes doesn’t count toward your $25 a week limit. It means you do not have money for cigarettes.
Make sense?
The point of the $25 Challenge is not just to see if you can make it through a week spending no more than $25 on food. The point is to think about what it means to not have the option to spend more than $25 a week, to not have the option for a beer after work, to not have the option to buy soap or feed your cat.
While it would be interesting to see how many people who are willing to engage in the $25 Challenge would be willing to take part in a $1,107 Per Month Challenge that covered EVERYTHING, the reality is that we wouldn’t do it. Nor should we feel compelled to do it out of any sense of guilt or privilege. That isn’t the point.
But we should think about it. When we take part in the $25 Challenge we should think about how we would handle the $1,107 Per Month Challenge and the $13,284 Per Year Challenge because for many people it is not a challenge. It is their life. Then take a step back and realize that there are 686,000 people in Illinois living in extreme poverty for whom the $13,284 Per Year Challenge would represent AN ALMOST 300% INCREASE in their income.
And that is the understanding and awareness that is the goal of the $25 Challenge.
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