Two Dollar Challenge

    It’s been a few days since the two dollar challenge ended and I’ve had time to mull over it and marinate in my thoughts. I left the challenge more appreciative of the things I have at my disposal and, in general, it made life richer to me. Forced thankfulness if you will. But after going back to my normal life, how am I a changed person? Did I change at all?

I’m pretty certain I did change, even if the exact alterations to my being aren’t immediately visible. I appreciate certain aspects of poverty that didn’t occur to me before. The usefulness of dumpsters comes to mind. The psychological effects of being poor and not having “good hygiene” also are a little more clear to me. 

I think the exercize does much to help us realize the trials of domestic poverty and homelessness. I feel more compelled to involve myself in some sort of program for fighting domestic poverty now that I had a very small taste of it.

However, the two dollar challenge is a horribly unrealistic indicator for simulating poverty abroad. So much so that I would completely discontinue association between the challenge and people that live on two dollars a day in other places. The positive externalities from which we benefit must far exceed two dollars, let alone the effort required to obtain food and what little capital can be garnished from labor. In this respect the challenge is a failure for me. I can visualize living on two dollars a day in a developing country no more now than I could before I undertook the challenge. The disconnect is too great. Civil wars, malaria, lack of a reliable police force and all the other issues that plague third world countries are impossible to simulate in the middle of a college campus.

None of us will ever likely experience or even get close to experiencing what the people on the website for the two dollar challenge experience. It’s been said before, but I will also cite it as the reason I deem this a failure. 

On the other hand, the challenge is a success in that it made me appreciate the things I have and the struggle with poverty and homelessness in this country. If I were running the challenge, I would hand it over to an organization that deals specifically with domestic poverty. I would also adopt a new awareness program. An idea for an awareness program might include lectures, video series, slide show presentations or something in that vein of thought. The poverty action conference is definitely works to this end. 

Overall, it was an interesting week. I definitely changed. I just don’t think I changed in the way towards which the challenge was oriented.

- Jonathan Trenary