Photo by Christopher Wehling, The Free Lance-Star (04/18/08)

The Two Dollar Challenge starts in just a few hours here at UMW, it’s an intensive week of living off, yep—you guessed it—$2 a day. Professor Shawn Humphries of the Economics department has spearheaded this initiative, and the Two Dollar Challenge website describes it as follows:

Our Challenge, the Two Dollar Challenge, is to partner with the poor to break the self-perpetuating cycle of poverty. The solution is twofold, through various development programs we can (1) expand economic opportunities and (2) improve the everyday living conditions faced by the poor. By relieving the immediate stresses of survival, we can help each individual see that they can take control of their own lives and act upon the opportunities that are present.

Our Poverty Action Program is designed to meet this challenge by working to create passionate and effective leaders in the field of economic development. Starting March 28 and ending April 26 each participant in our Poverty Action Program will have the opportunity to administer Challenge Week on their respective campus and fundraise for their own initiatives. (See a list of current participants).

Creating “passionate and effective leaders,” now there’s a challenge, I think must of us would just settle for effective! You can read more about the challenge on the official site here. And if you are planning on taking the challenge, or would simply like to follow it more closely over the next week, check out the Two Dollar Challenge blog right here on UMW Blogs. The site will be aggregating relevant blog posts, images, and videos from around the web regularly. And if you are starting your are planning on documenting your own challenge with a blog, photos, or video camera, be sure to share them through this site. Go here for more details.

Good luck, and if cigarettes were cheaper I’d join you