Filming. My name is Chris, and I grew up just outside of New York City. This is Zach, and he's a close friend of mine from Seattle.
We've grown up with very similar lives. These are the houses we were born in. Our families. The awkward middle school phase.
The sports we played, and these are the things we did for fun. I met Zach during my first year at college, and we quickly became close friends. Our lives are fast-paced, and these are the things that we're used to seeing every day.
This is Chino. He is 12 years old and lives in a rural village in Guatemala. He lives in extreme poverty on less than one dollar a day.
How can we begin to understand what his life is like? About what it means to live every day with no clean water, little food and poor shelter. And just like Chino, there are over 1.1 billion people around the world that survive on $1 a day. Zach and I study international development in school, but there are some things that a textbook just can't answer. So we're creating a plan to spend our summer living on only $1 a day in a rural Guatemalan village.
In Chino's village. I love you. Come on, thank you.
Okay, bye mom, I love you. Bye. Why do it? I think it's just an amazing opportunity to learn for myself what it really means to live under a dollar a day.
Which, coming from this reality, I can't really say I have any idea. I love you. I love you too. We're bringing along two filmmakers and setting out to better understand the reality of extreme poverty firsthand.
Let's do this. We're beginning our journey in Guatemala City with a six-hour ride on the back of a crowded chicken bus. We are headed to the village of Peña Blanca that's representative of rural poverty in many parts of the world.
In these remote areas of Guatemala, seven out of ten people live under the poverty line. Is that you're hitting stuff there? Well I think we've got a boundary of like a big rock right here so this might have to be our edge. Sweet.
Maybe it's just gonna be chipped away. Yeah, it can. Okay. Why is it going out like that? You're pulling it too hard.
Pulling it too hard? No. Sadness.
We're getting rid of everything that's in our needs. Eight weeks of this is pretty damn too long. Oh god. I cannot believe it came together.
This is so one of those ideas that we would talk about and never do. Well, we're here. Audio recording.
Filming, filming. Well? We're here in the rural highlands in the small village of Peñablanca. There are about 300 people living here, most of whom are Mayan. Most of the people only spoke a Mayan dialect called Kachikel and it was impossible to learn.
Say kur. Say kur. Say kur.
Say kur. We want to live as close as possible to the reality of poverty, so we're replicating a few key aspects of it. Our budget for the trip is $1 a day each for 56 days.
But instead of giving ourselves $1 every day, we're making our income unpredictable. This way, we do not know when we'll get paid. We're doing this because many of our neighbors are employed informally, as day laborers or farmers, so they never know when they'll get paid, or how much they'll make.
We're simulating this by taking our total budget of $1 a day each, and splitting it into random numbers between 0 and 9. Then every morning we'll pick a number out of a hat. If we pick a nine, we make nine dollars that day. Pulled a nine.
No way! You got a nine? Or it's a six. Nine's a nine for sure.
That's good. Hey, dude. He's good.
A second aspect of poverty we want to simulate is the process of starting our own business. So we're taking out a loan of $125 to pay for somewhere to live and for a plot of land to grow radishes on. Our small loan is part of a service for the poor called microfinance. Zach and I have heard both good and bad things about these banks, but wanted to see firsthand if they were helping in Peña Blanca, both from our neighbors and by taking out a loan ourselves. This means that every 15 days we'll have to pay back small installments of $6.25 or else have to default on our loan.
I mean we got 1,312 quetzales. That's how much we have left. So... Get a chicken, sell some eggs.
Yeah, I mean out of that we can get... I mean if we buy a chicken out of that, that's... Dude, we're not buying a chicken out of that.
I think we should buy a chicken out of that. No, dude, like... It doesn't even... Like, chickens don't like, automatically lay eggs.
They don't have money for feed. And we can buy, like, fruit or anything else that's so much better for us. Okay, we'll research. We'll research. Okay, but like dude, like I would be so angry if our chicken doesn't lay eggs.
Football. Ah, you like football. Mommy, get out of there and look what's in there. Hello.
Is that really where we're going to get water from? Oh, dude, there's a bug in there. Sean, you should check this out.
That's actually how much stuff is in there. Hey, we have a water source. We can't grow anything that's going to finish by the time we leave.
But if we can actually grow radishes, potentially in time, does that sort of switch our idea back? Well, except that I still don't know how to really grow radishes. I mean, like, radishes completely, like, any... Everything depends on the soil content, which we have no idea about. It depends on how much fertilizer we need.
You just need to know how to farm and we just don't. We could wing it and try and help, but it works. But like...
Yes. Ah, yes? It's very expensive.
Very expensive. Yes. How bad.
Like this? Yes, like this. Six more weeks, then I'll eat it. Thank you, Don Carlos.
You're welcome. Thank you very much. Six. Hey, gracias.
No, no, no. One of my questions was, were the people in living in extreme poverty like really thinking about how they manage money? Or was it this survival mode and it's like just trying to scrape together anything they have just to feed their children?
How many people are here? 8 8 people Firewood is probably the most expensive thing that we were buying in our budget. We are living on the line, on the edge always of being able to drop into a really bad situation.
That's the best thing I've ever eaten. One and a half pounds of black beans gives us 1,600 calories. One and a half pounds of yellow rice gives us 2,000, roughly. But still, like, 3,600 calories split amongst four people is not good enough for our daily value. Zach fell flat on his ass after...
Every time we stand up for some reason, like, get huge head rushes, I've almost passed out, like, I don't know, today, probably like three times. And I don't know if that's a lack of nutrition or what the deal is, but... Zach actually went for it today. We had our first full-on, full-on fall, and when he came to, he was only speaking in Spanish.
I'm used to eating a lot. I'm used to being active a lot. But when you're not eating anything, when you're eating like 500 calories, you become incredibly lethargic.
You have zero energy to do anything. I'm not going to eat anything. I'm going to sleep. I was born in the village of Kwanzaa. I was born in the village of Kwanzaa.
I was born in the village of Kwanzaa. I was born in the village of Kwanzaa. I was born in the village of Kwanzaa. I was born in the village of Kwanzaa. I was born in the village of Kwanzaa.
I was born in the village of Kwanzaa. This is only my second week actually in Peñablanca and I feel like we're already showing signs of being worn down and dejected. We all have these pulgas. We all kind of got destroyed on our dirt floors.
Where are the pulgas? Do you have pulgas? Yes. You know, that was the point where I was, you know, like, I want to go home.
Like, I need to get out of here. Like, why am I doing this? And we were eating better than a lot of the people. ...in the community. Jose Enrico just brought us a gift.
He wrote us a letter. Does he want it? He wants us to come to the classroom?
¿Y has preguntado a su profesor? ¿Si? Gracias, Jose.
There are 40% of students who don't finish, don't have to go to school, so they have to go to work. Okay, pass to me and correct. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Did you see that madness? That was 315 kids playing with like six different balls at the same time. And I don't know how many games and snacks were distributed, but that was nuts.
That was nuts. Have fun. We really didn't know who he was initially. He was kind of just the kid that was always around. And he was just like so eager to learn.
Chino, How are you? Si, perfecto. It turns out Chino's family couldn't afford the $25 cost of books and supplies for school. They had a family of eight that lived in a single room. They no longer had electricity because they couldn't pay for it.
His father never knew when he was going to work or not because he worked as a day laborer. And Chino, who was 12, had to work in the fields. We'd see him coming walking up the mountain with this thing wrapped around his head and like a huge bundle of like logs and sticks behind him.
At one point Chris asked Chino like you know if you could do anything what would you do? you be? "and Chino's response was, you know, I'm gonna be a farmer. And you know, Chris was like, you know, like, what would you be if you could be anything? And I mean, he was like, I'd be a pro soccer player. But at 12 years old, Chino had accepted the fate that he was gonna be a farmer. Chino, like most of the people here, speaks Cachiquel in only a few words of Spanish. Ummm... Agua cafe O... In English... is avocado Avocado Avocado Avocado And food... Food. Food. Comida in Cachiquel es... Ic. Ic. Ic. Ic. Ic. Ic. Este inglesa. Este? Si. Se llama candle. Candle. Candle. En Cachiquel? Candle. Candle. Oh, si, es como el mismo. Yeah, I mean, I think I completely saw myself in a lot of them. You know, I was, like, eager to learn. You're, like, so excited about building little things outside of our house. And, you know, that's what I did for my childhood, realizing that it is the situation that I was in. that they're in that's holding them back, not who they are. Can you pick up? How are you? How are you? Yes, very good. It's three words. How are you? Robinus are growing. I know. We're gonna pay off our finance loan. We'll eat more. It's gonna happen, man. I can sense it already. They're very clumpy, though. They are really clumpy. That's bad, right? Everything about a banana. It brings me joy here. You peel it back, it's naked. It's a naked fruit. It's vulnerable. I just take a bite and savor it each time. Like it's the best bite of banana I'll ever take. Every single time. I just make sure the top of the banana is always even after. Oh yeah. Your teeth are always kind of indented like this. So then you have to play the game and reverse the bite. Oh nice, yeah. So that it's even. It slows down your eating too. As economics majors, Chris and I were really interested in how do the person living under a dollar a day manage their money. We're asking people questions like how much money do you make, what are your expenses, where do you save money, do you have any outstanding loans. These are really personal questions for anyone. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. What's your name? My name is Antonio. Good. Anthony and I think the first week we were there, he was like the first. growing up from the community to come to our house, introduce himself, you know he was so excited to meet us. Someday, when they have time, they can come to my house. There is my wife, I have children, my mom and dad. I live here, La Huertecita. It's not that far. Just 24 and 20 years old, Anthony and Rosa already manage a household of eight people. As a family they survive on a dollar 25 each per day to pay for not only food but larger costs of a new baby, their kids education and repairs to their house. His wife is 20. I'm 20. She has three children. His wife's younger than me, dude. I feel like I look up to her so much. $125. No, it's like... They're teaching us how to more efficiently make fires, cook more substantive food, and better bargain in town. Living so close to the edge, these small changes are having huge impacts on our lives. Probably the most important one is lard. We bought some straight lard today in town to try to add to our fat content. If you could feel this texture right now, it is one of the foulest things ever. This lard right here has... What was it? 208 grams of fat, 1,800 calories, which is the equivalent more than the rice or beans that we were eating. and we started mashing our beans and refrying our beans in lard. It's so good in the stomach. In our third week, they invited us over to their home for a small snack. But when we arrived, they were preparing the traditional meal of pulik, served only twice a year for special occasions. Cheese and a glass of beer. Oh, oh, oh, si! Si! Si, claro! Mmm, chan! Sit down. Can you say a few words to the camera? Oh, yes, of course. He wants to say a few things to the camera. Oh, yes. Yes, you can say it. You, Chris, Chris, Chris, Zach, Ryan, Sean, for me, you are like brothers. All of you four. And if you want to come back to my house, I'll give you the house and food. Even if it's a public cup. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our desire to reap. To repay Anthony and Rosa, not only for the expense of the incredible food, but also their generosity, is overwhelming. They have so little, yet they're willing to give so much. We all agree that somehow we will save the money to cook them a pulik dinner before we go. We're like 60. It's only three days. We can just decrease our... the amount we eat. We can get like, you know, a pound and a half. I mean, I don't think we even really need to dip into our savings that much. Yeah. At all. That'd be awesome. If we can just...if we just want to like not eat very much. We drew a loan number, so we're having some struggles with how we need to pay Anthony's family back and also pay off our loan, which is due in three days. We drew really low numbers for four days. I pulled four numbers in a row and two of them were zeros and two of them were ones. So amongst the four of us we had 12 cents a person to live on per day. And you know we woke up and it was market day and we literally have no money for food. Open the other one there. We had no money for food. So this is a big poll. We need a minimum of two or higher. If we get a one, no bananas. If we get a zero, we gotta go talk to Anthony and take out a loan from him. Let's see. It's a nine. No! No! Yay! Got it, boy! Dude, you're the clutchest puller in the world. It's a masket! Yes! Oh my god. Dude, so cute. Bananas for everyone. We got lucky and pulled a nine. But what if you're out of food and you don't know the next time money will be coming in? After I graduated from sixth grade, my parents couldn't give me a degree. So I stayed like this, I was working. And also because of the other girls, I felt very sad. Because they were dressed well, they had shoes, they had everything. And while one... I was able to continue with my studies. And at the same time, I still want to study, I want to achieve the career I want. That's what I want. I want to have my degree, my nursing degree. It's day 28, right? Day 28? Day 28. We had started to do these really amazing interviews around the fourth week and Chris and I spoke Spanish so we were understanding everything that was going on. started to be affected by these stories, but Ryan and Sean didn't speak Spanish. And they were talking, and they're like, when you finally deal with, you know, learning how to survive, it's not so bad. No problem. This is not that hard, you know. We're halfway through. I could do this for another two years. I just got really angry and upset because clearly the people we were around, they had learned to survive, but it wasn't okay. And it wasn't easy for them. And they had to work so hard every single day. And they couldn't follow their dreams because they couldn't go to school because they had to provide for their family. And Chris and I were so involved with this research that we weren't sharing what was going on. What were some of the questions in general? I guess I don't really even know what you guys were asking. We started getting into where all their income was coming from and what skills they used to work and what they really deal with to find money in emergencies. Their lives are so much more complicated than our initial interviews showed. Even something as simple as what you cook with is important. A broken stove? It's incredibly hard to save up a large amount of money for a cooking stove, but Anthony did it with 12 of his friends by using an innovative idea called a savings club. Together, they each decided to save $12 every month. And at the end of each month, the total sum of $144 would be randomly distributed to one of the members. This process then repeats itself until each person has benefited from a large sum of money at a single time. And that large sum of money was much more useful to them because they could take that money and spend it on a big ticket item like a stove or maybe pay for a wedding and you know that's that's really innovative. And we started talking about how close this community was. And we hang out with Chino every day. And his mom this past year got really sick. And they don't even have enough money to get a car to go to the hospital in town. And Anthony actually paid for them to go to the hospital. He paid for the doctor's visits. And the medicine. And the medicine. Anthony can afford the loan because he's the only one in the village who has a formal job. Unlike everyone else, he can count on getting a regular paycheck. When I gave money to the Chinese family, I see the need they have because I look at Chino as if it were me, myself. And while Anthony did help these other people, like that's still a huge strain on their own finances. Yeah, that's where like if there was an institution willing to take on that risk and lend to someone like Chino's parents. You know then they don't have to put a strain on Antonio and you know not everyone has that community around them or the people they can go to in times of need You know and that was something that Hola Chino And Bien bien Good I am good How are you? Good. Not everyone has such a tight-knit community around them. So if you have an emergency like Chino's parents here, what are you going to do if you don't have that person right next to you, or you don't have the emergency funds or that community to rely on? That's true. Dr.Devil's pretty sick at the moment. He's got a little bit of an upset. Upset. This is just gonna make me vomit. At one point I had both Giardia and E. coli at the same time and you know, that's no good, especially when you only have two pairs of boxers and you're sleeping. you know, on the same mat, sharing a blanket with someone next to you. I, uh... Chris is really sick. I just heard him get up. It just doesn't sound like he's doing very well. Dude, I think it, uh... I have that, like, sulfuric burp thing happening again. Like, I can't even push on my stomach. I can't sleep another night like this. I'm gonna go get Chris tested for some bacterial infections and see if he has a parasite or... hopefully it's just a stomach thing. Today in town we found out that Chris has some parasites in his stomach. It's called Giardia. Giardia, I believe. And it's like living in my small intestine in here. And it causes like excessive bloating and stomach pressure. The medicine is 200 quetzales. So even if people could afford to get tested, it's incredibly expensive to actually get the medicine. There's no way we could pay that cost. I have to use medicine that we brought in case of emergency. If we can't budget for a simple sickness, what will we do in the case of a more serious problem? Just two months before we arrived, Hurricane Agatha smashed through Guatemala. Disaster workers in Guatemala say at least a dozen people are dead. The tropical storm Agatha slammed into its Pacific coast Saturday. The thunderstorms over there have affected a lot of people. We are cultivating, and a lot of water comes in, and we take it by the stream. What percentage of your land did you lose in Agape Storm? About 75%. 75%? Yes. When there is a disaster, a collapse, If you have lost everything, how do you get the money to get back on your feet? How do you begin building a lump sum to start a business? We wanted to see if getting a loan from a traditional bank was even an option for our neighbors. Okay, so you have to put the camera down initially, I think, unless you want me to just like through the door and then put it down. Hello, good afternoon. Is it possible that he can take a picture of me when I'm asking about the loan? He's trying to tell me what he can't. We can't take pictures inside. Oh, no, it's not possible? We can't take pictures inside. So, um... Are you going for the discreet film? Yeah. What do I need to win? in my business to have a loan. These are the minimum requirements that we usually ask for. Perfect, okay. Thank you very much for your help. Let's get out, let's get out, let's get out, let's get out. That was highly illegal to do it. So I tried to see if we could get a 3000 quetzale loan. And the problem is we need all of these other items. We need a receipt of our electricity bills. We need an N. IT number, which she said costs a bunch of money to get. We need a copy of the amount of money we're making, which I don't think we can get if we have an informal job. Bills from the last three months, two people who will sign for us, and then we need to be able to sign our name, too. There's no chance we can get a loan from that bank. There's just no way. We visited Rosa again to see if there are any other options. Doña Maria told me there's a service. Grameen provides reliable savings accounts and loans designed to empower the poorest of the poor to improve their lives. Gramming is easier to receive a resume because it works with simple things. They don't ask for as many things as in other banks. They ask for the writing of the house or the land. Not like gramming, it only asks for a copy of the cell phone. It's simple things. With a loan of just $200, Rosa was able to start her own weaving business. It was so huge to see the potential for what even the simple access to credit can do in the lives of our neighbors, of our close friends. Ah, yes! How beautiful! My loan was a solution for me, because I could do something. With that I bought my children, and with the profit I started paying for my studies. So, another example here. 30 seconds! 50 seconds! 30, right? No, no! How? When a Grameen borrower receives a loan, they also commit to opening a long-term savings account, a safe and a convenient way to build up a large sum of money. We found that beyond using a loan or savings account to start a business, our neighbors were using them to absorb shocks and make investments around the house. And he gave us those 3,000 quetzales, 9,000 quetzales, we made the floor and the house was beautiful. Now there's no water in the house. These financial services such as microfinance, they go far beyond just providing extra capital. They really shape the family and they have these side effects of empowering women. Finally, we have Rabanos. We have grown our Rabanos. And now we have tons and tons of Rabanos. What happened is there's an explosion of Rabanos. Instead of selling our radishes, we're giving them out as gifts to thank the people we've interviewed. These radishes represent a new source of income for us. One that can move us closer to $2 a day. While that still doesn't seem like much, it would double our livelihood. And it's kind of those small incremental changes that actually have such a profound effect on people that are living at that level. And, you know, I feel like that will have such an impact on the next generation of that family that it's really there that we'll see progress out of poverty. Is this here? Yes, this one. How cool! But here there is a music called... the sound. The sound, that's how they call it. I've never heard it. After all of this research, we had saved up the whole time for this pulik dinner. It was just this amazing moment and that was the last day that we were there. We wanted to convey just like how appreciative we were of what they had done for us and not only from you know what they had shared with us but being our friends and building a relationship with us and in many ways teaching us and accepting us as As a friend instead of just, you know, a foreigner. What can I do as an individual? That's the hardest part about it and what we were talking about last night is... There is no one answer, you know, that we've poured three, you know, two and a half trillion dollars in international development trying to end poverty. And a lot of times it's just made things worse. Like that's what we're trying to prove so much right here is the power of partial solutions that like you know There's more people who are not in pot not living in poverty than there are who than there are living in poverty like each individual Can affect and help a single other individual we can Change the world Hello Hello How are you? Thank you. How are you? I'm good, thank you. What is your name? My name is Carlos. What is your name? My name is Chris. It's nice to meet you. It's nice to meet you. The answer is the same as the answer in Spanish. Good morning. How are you? No, no, in English it's the answer. How are you? Good. What is your name? It's four words, so... What is your name? I now have a much deeper respect for someone living at that level. I personally, I lost 20 pounds in just two months and I got to go home and rehabilitate. But what if that's someone's life where they live like that day in and day out with no nutrition and not an adequate amount of food. It was something that we could never have imagined. It was something we had to live. I wanted to be a nurse. And I hope God wills it. I will have that wish, to fulfill my dream. It's the people in the United States who are watching this video. To the people who are going to see this, a greeting and a greeting to their parents, their mothers, their other families. Thank you all. Thank you! Yes! Thank you for everything! But I also want to ask you for that favor. Don't forget the people of Peñablanca. We are fighting to overcome our lives, but we are also fighting to survive. Oh Zach can we have it? Can we have it? Look it's a chicken! Can we have it Zach? I really love it! Thank you.