Reflection #6

      I decided to write a reflection on the documentary we watched in class, Living on One Dollar.  I am planning on doing my research paper over this documentary and another. Therefore, I have been doing a lot of back research on this film.  I thought I would share some of the interesting things I found out about this project through this reflection.  When I began to research, the first article I came across had information about the financial situation.  Over a billion people in this world live on less than one dollar a day.  Another shocking number is at least 80 percent of the world lives on less than ten dollars a day.  However, more than 80 percent of the world’s population is living in a country that is working on increasing incomes and working on solutions for poverty.  The final fact that I will share is less than one percent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and it never happened.  These are numbers that influenced the production of Living on One Dollar.  Another interesting fact of the film is how the idea started.  The creators Chris Temple and Zach Ingrasci were sophomore economic majors (as mentioned in the movie), studying economic development in different places.  The two were sitting at a bar in their hometown brainstorming things they could do to understand extreme poverty for their upcoming summer vacation.  The first statistic mentioned above, lead to the concept of living under a dollar a day for two months in Guatemala.  If this is something you are thinking about in a bar as a college student, it really is your passion.  They applied to about 13 funding places, but got rejected by all of them.  Their families even began to doubt the trip leaving them devastated by the lack of support.  At the least minute, Whole Planet Foundation (Whole Foods) agreed to fund them.  My favorite part about this documentary is that even though it focuses on poverty, they avoid making the audience feel guilty.  This documentary empowers and gives confidence to younger generations to make a difference in global poverty.