This year over 4000 people across the UK decided to get sponsored to eat and drink for £1 a day for 5 days, raising an incredible £700,000 in vital funds to combat extreme poverty and empower some of the poorest communities around the world. If you're reading this, you might well be one of them. If so, our partner charities want to tell you just how much impact every penny you raised is going to have for their work. Make no mistake- your money has changed lives.

AfriKids

Together this year AfriKids fundraisers have raised an incredible £5,244 through Live Below The Line. As the campaign draws to a close, we want to thank everyone for your amazing effort and let you know the considerable impact your fundraising will make to our beneficiaries in northern Ghana. £5,244 is enough to provide all 29 children in our Next Generation Home with food for half a year!!

The Next Generation Home provides drop-in or transitional care for trafficked, street and vulnerable children. Both short and long term residents can access education, healthcare, and have a safe haven to reside. Short-term residents are supported through a resettlement process that includes counselling for both the child and family. Once resettled the family receives income generation support and outreach support to ensure they stay on track. These are some of the most vulnerable children we work with, and this programme offers them hope of a future and the opportunity of a safe and loving childhood.

Thank you from the whole UK team, our incredible staff in northern Ghana and all 921,249 beneficiaries we have supported.

Restless Development

Uganda is one of the poorest nations in the world, with 63% of the population living on less than £1 a day. Most affected are Uganda’s rural areas, which are home to more than 85% of Ugandans, and where many are dependent on agriculture as their main source of income.

The £32,000 raised for Restless Development through Live Below the Line will enable us to expand out livelihoods work to support those most in need. These funds will enable us to provide start-up equipment, seeds, tools, machinery and storage facilities for 75 small rural businesses in Uganda. These are mainly agricultural businesses such as piggeries, poultry and crops.

These 75 businesses would provide an income and a livelihood for approximately 375 people. This income will support entire families and communities, helping to lift over 3,000 people out of poverty.

Salvation Army

In Turkana, north-west Kenya 95% of people live below the poverty line. The dry and erratic climate causes many problems with accessing food and water, while its remoteness means there is a lack of education and health provisions. The Salvation Army is working to address all of these issues through an ambitious project looking to improve access to clean water and safe sanitation, train communities on the use of drought-resistant crops and how to minimise their water use. Alongside all of this we will be helping to improve people’s livelihood through training, livestock provision and the creation of savings groups.

Leah Lopua (pictured in title image) is a mother of 11 children and the elected chairperson of her local savings group in the small village of Nanam in Lokichoggio. She leads a group of 40 women who meet weekly. From the pool of money kept in a metal box with three padlocks, the group members can borrow small loans. Using the loans, most of the women are engaging in livestock businesses, grocery and bead making.

Leah says, ‘We joined the group since life was very difficult for each of us. We decided we needed to support one another.’ She continues to say that the women now are able to afford to purchase food for their families and do not rely on outsiders’ help. They can also provide school fees for their children.

Leah is very hopeful that the women in her group will continue to overcome poverty and support their families.

Nakuru Children’s Project

In Nakuru, Kenya, every penny of Live Below The Line fundraising is going to make an enormous difference. Our incredible participants raised £6,191 for Nakuru Children’s Project, a small NGO that works to improve education and relieve poverty in Kenya. This money will provide over 18,700 free school lunches to children who would otherwise eat little more than one meal per day. This includes children like little Barack Obama Jr (his real name - we promise), pictured above! A free school lunch helps Barack and his friends to grow up happily and healthily, encouraging them to attend school with more energy to achieve better grades. It will help more than 200 children build their own futures - an amazing achievement!

Farm Africa

The money raised by everyone who Lived Below the Line as part of Team Farm Africa, could help women like Abrehet look forward to a future free from hunger.

Until recently, Abrehet was desperately poor and struggling to provide for her family from the dry and rocky land around her home in Tigray, northern Ethiopia. But all this has now changed, and this once penniless woman is now the proud owner of eight healthy goats!

Her good fortune started when she received three goats from Farm Africa as part of our goat rearing project. She also attended sessions at Farm Africa’s training centre where she learnt how to build a safe home for her goats using locally available materials, as well as what to feed them and how to care for them.

Before long Abrehet’s goats were pregnant and produced three healthy kids that she passed on to another woman in her community. Since then, Abrehets’s goats have since produced six more kids – one of which she sold to buy some food for her children. She also bought two chickens that will, in time, provide her with a plentiful supply of eggs to eat and sell. With no husband to provide for the family, the money Abrehet earns from her livestock is a lifeline; so she is eager to grow her goat herd and expand her flock of chickens. “I am so happy with the goat project, as I can now start earning an income. Many thank yous!”

UNICEF

The first thousand days are the most critical in a child’s life. Without enough of the nutrients they need, their bodies and brains don’t develop the way they should. Unicef provides 80% of the world’s life-saving emergency food. We help mothers and communities keep their children healthy and well nourished. By treating malnutrition in the first 1,000 days of a child's life, Unicef has helped cut the number of children badly affected by stunting by nearly 100 million since 1990. But there is much more to do, and the money raised through Live Below the Line 2015 will help Unicef to continue keeping children safe.

Concern

The money you helped us to raise in this year’s Live Below the Line challenge enables us to tackle hunger for the world’s poorest people. Thanks to you, children like Deli here, whose mother Monica, became a participant in Concern’s RAIN (Realigning Agriculture to Improve Nutrition) project in Zambia, can look forward to a happier and healthier life.  Concern provided Monica with knowledge and training, as well as tools, seeds and livestock to enable her to grow a wide variety of foods, and now Deli and her brothers and sisters can eat three nutritious meals a day.

The Hunger Project

The Hunger Project is delighted to have been a part of the Live Below the Line campaign again this year. We are proud of our fantastic Belowtheliners and supporters, who together have helped us raise a record-breaking £27,000! This money will support our work in over 17,000 communities in Asia, Africa and Latin America, empowering women and men to lift themselves and their families, above the poverty line.

At The Hunger Project, we believe that we can be the generation to end hunger, developing 395,000 local leaders to become agents of change in their communities.

The Hunger Project is one of the world’s foremost agencies in developing women’s leadership to end hunger and poverty, with strategies including empowering women in local democracy in India, building a movement of women leaders in Bangladesh, strengthening the capacity of indigenous leaders in Latin America, and creating and establishing women-owned and women-run rural banks in Africa. The money raised from the Live Below the Line campaign will help us continue our work.

We know that women are pivotal to the sustainable end of hunger. Communities become more resilient, families are healthier, more children go to school, incomes increase, and agricultural productivity improves. When women are empowered and supported, everyone rises.

Action Against Hunger

Living Below the Line for Action Against Hunger helps us get even closer to putting an end to child hunger, for good. Your support allows Action Against Hunger save the lives of malnourished children, while providing communities with sustainable access to safe water and good nutrition.

So far this year the campaign has raised over £41,000 for our lifesaving programmes, which can have an incredible impact when you consider that just:

• £13 can provide a family with emergency cooking utensils to prepare nutritious food for their children,
• £42 can provide a month’s supply of therapeutic nutritional products to nurse a severely malnourished child back to health,
• £140 can fund the rehabilitation of a well for a community to provide vital, lasting access to clean, safe drinking water

By supporting Action Against Hunger through Live Below the Line you are helping to create sustainable changes so that malnutrition no longer stands in the way of children living happy, healthy lives and fulfilling their potential.

Child Hope

Everyone at ChildHope would like to say a big thank you for taking on the Live Below the Line challenge. All together you have raised a fantastic £9,000. This money will have a lasting and huge impact on the lives of vulnerable children.

£500 can pay for two after school clubs for one year in Peru for children involved in child labour

£1500 can provide a year’s educational support to 50 children who have survived sexual exploitation and early marriage in Ethiopia.

£3000 can provide early years learning and care to 30 children aged 2-5 years in Bangladesh.

“I want to be a doctor and teach children about hygiene. I can now take a bath and maintain cleanliness since we moved from the dumpsite.”

So there you have it- what you've done this year during Live Below the Line was an important way to start conversations about extreme poverty, but the funds raised are literally going to change lives.