When asked the question “what is the minimum dollar amount per day that you could survive on?”  the answer is usually more than one dollar.  However, when Matt Jones and his brother Andrew Jones, along with their two friends travelled to Haiti, they decided to live on just that: one dollar per day.   In a video released on August 14^th, the Bucks County natives and Penn State graduates chronicle their journey to Haiti where they live in poverty just like the Haitian natives.

The four men live by six rules for 28 days:

1.   Live on one dollar per day.
2.   Live in a tent with one blanket.
3.   No toiletries.
4.   Cannot accept free food.
5.   Only two sets of clothes.
6.   No laundry facilities.

Both Matt and Andrew graduated from Penn State in 2011 and 2012 respectively. After their trip to Haiti, the brothers founded Poverty Resolutions, a non-profit organization dedicated to the “eradication of dollar a day poverty”.  Their website outlines their financial transparencies, and they have a goal of using 50% of their resources on projects that directly assist people in poverty, 25% on education and poverty awareness in the United States, and 20-25% on administrative costs including fundraising.

At the end of their video, the brothers give three ways to help their cause; share the video, donate to the cause, and create a poverty week to help garner awareness in your community.  Awareness is the first step to making a difference, and these Penn Staters are certainly doing their best to spread awareness.  Most of us will never know what its like to experience complete and utter destruction, but that certainly doesn’t mean we cant help those who are living in it.