Sean Krausert is giving up some the comforts in his life to raise awareness of world poverty.
A resident of the Bow Valley for the past 15 years, Krausert, 42, lives in Canmore with his wife and two children. Calling his awareness campaign That Poverty Project and referring to himself as That Poverty Guy, Krausert will inflict different aspects of poverty upon himself over three three-month periods.
“My passion is about social justice and what I believe is the most important issue in the world is poverty,” he said. “Poverty is deadlier than AIDS, TB and malaria, conflict and natural disasters combined, and I believe it’s the thing we have to address most.”
“I’m trying to build understanding of poverty by undergoing three different poverty experiences,” he said.
A former lawyer, Krausert is an ordained deacon and serves at St. Michael’s Anglican Church.
For the first phase of the project, which officially began July 23, he will partially attempt to simulate homelessness by living in a tent in his backyard.
“I’m living without the comforts of home in a tent, sparsely equipped,” he said, though in reality the tent is equipped with electricity and internet access, and he will still have access to the house for meals and the use of the bathroom.
The second stage he calls the “struggles of the working poor.”
“For that one, I’ll be living in the house, but after my house is paid for, I’ll be living with a very small budget to cover the rest of my needs – food, transportation, clothes, etc.,” he explained.
With the third stage, Krausert plans to experience hunger.
“For three months I’ll be living on food rations one would get from the world food program,” he said. He noted, however, he will probably find the food too bland and will probably cheat by flavouring it with spices.
The rations provide 2,100 calories of energy and are more than adequate to maintain a healthy diet. Krausert will also not be giving up clean drinking water.
“All throughout this, I’ll be blogging and posting and tweeting and otherwise writing in order to raise awareness about my experience with poverty situations in hopes that I’ll increase understanding of my readers about poverty,” he said. “Through that understanding, I hope that there will be greater empathy, which will lead to greater action, in order to help people.”
The world currently has a more than abundant supply of resources, he said, and has the ability to meet the basic needs of everyone.
“We can continue to live well, but with a little bit of effort on a lot of people’s parts, we can make a world of difference for those who are currently suffering from poverty around the world,” he said.
Krausert defined poverty as not having five essential basic human needs met.
“(They are) food and water, shelter, basic education, access to health care, and the fifth deals with situations of oppression and persecution, freedom from fear,” he explained. “I believe once you have those five things met, you are out of the realms of basic poverty.
“A billion people are hungry – not knowing where their next meal is coming from. You have two and a half billion people that don’t have access to clean water or sanitation services. Within those numbers, you have people that don’t have adequate shelter.”
While he alluded to Africa and other places in the developing world, Canada is not free of poverty either.
“One in 10 Canadians live below the poverty line – that means right here in Canada there are people who are homeless, people without adequate water supply, people that can’t afford to meet their basic needs,” he said. “Right here in Canmore we have kids that go to school without lunch because their families can’t afford it.”
To follow Krausert, his website is www.thatpovertyproject.com, through which he says he’s already had feedback leading to positive results.
“I’ve received a story of how a lady encountered a homeless person and she saw that person differently,” he said. “Not as some strange creature to be feared, but as a person with needs and perhaps a person that she could help – and she did help by providing some food.”
More than anything, Krausert wants to raise awareness of the issue.
“The project is intended to reflect on poverty through my own experiences of self sacrifice and help people understand what it would be like for somebody like them to perhaps be without, and perhaps create that bridge between them and those who are without and drawing the connection that we are in fact the same, just in different situations.”
