Poverty Challenge: How It Works
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Poverty Challenge: How It Works

Step 1:	Register and decide which budget you will follow! Encourage friends and family to participate as well. You may register here or using the registration box on the right hand side of the page. Next, choose if you are going to following the poverty wage or minimum budget during the poverty challenge and download the appropriate reflection journal. Participants use an the electronic budget guide or use the budget guide included in the journal.
Step 2:	On Day 1, go about your day as you normally would, and record your spending, including food and any extras in the downloaded journal. There are several questions in the journal to help your reflect on your relationship to poverty in western New York.
Step 3:	On Day 2, come as close to possible to keeping your daily spending within the allotted poverty-level budget. Be conscious of all your actions, and take the cost of each of them into account. Record your spending in your journal as well as your experiences in the journal. We encourage you to send them to the Homeless Alliance to be posted on our blog!
Step 4:	Continue using your budget and recording your expenses during Day 3. Continue answering the questions/prompts in your journal to help get the most out of the Poverty Challenge.
Step 5:	Take your experiences with you. This event is designed to function as an introduction to poverty. Many people do not realize the prevalence of poverty in the western New York region and the cyclical nature of it. In order to eliminate homelessness, poverty must be the lens we look at the issue through. Hopefully this event will encourage you to get involved (or more involved) in the fight against poverty