Wait...no McDonalds?! No booze?! But what about Saturday night?
We're two Masters students at the University of Manchester who are currently volunteering at Community Arts North West on an asylum seeker and refugee research project. Halfway through our research we stumbled across shocking stats about the number of asylum seekers living destitute in Manchester - 2,000 in fact. Once they are refused asylum, the states cuts them off completely as if they don't exist. They have to rely on charity to help them survive.
Charities like the British Red Cross and the Boaz Trust provide Manchester's destitute asylum seekers with food parcels and a few pounds each week to get by. We figured that seeing as though it's Lent and we want to raise awareness, we're going to live off one of these food parcels for a week (along with two of Toni's friends, Aisling and Alejandra) - of course we will buy the produce ourselves. So, starting on Saturday morning at 12am sharp (no sneaky slices of buttered toast at 12:05am) we will give up the usual luxuries...
Watch this space for our daily updates about what it's like to be living destitute (starting Friday with our trip to Aldi to pick up the not-so-abundant food parcel).
Wish us luck!
Amy and Toni
Good luck guys! Sounds tough but I'm sure you can do it for a week... at least it's not a life time! x
ReplyDeleteBest of luck to all of you! This is a great cause, hope you make it through the week. I'll try not to rub it in too much! x
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