ADVERTISEMENT

Affleck to Rough It in Mansion

Ben Affleck / AP

Ben Affleck, who recently started a new job as a stay-at-home dad, is keeping busy by challenging himself to live in "poverty" for five days.

Live Below the Line USA announced on its Facebook page Monday that Ben Affleck would be participating in its poverty initiative to raise money for the Eastern Congo Initiative, the non-profit organization the actor started in 2010 to provide grants for economic and social development in Eastern Congo.

The Live Below The Line initiative challenges participants to live on a $1.50 per day food budget from April 29 to May 3 in an attempt to raise awareness and change perceptions about global poverty.

The actor will be far from roughing it. Affleck’s trek to the grocery store for rations will be a comfortable trek in one of his luxury vehicles, likely the households grocery-getter, the Land Rover.  For shelter he will be taking refuge in a $17.5 million home in Los Angeles’ affluent Pacific Palisades neighborhood, which hardly constitutes a sacrifice.

Affleck can learn some survival techniques from wife Jennifer Garner. The actress earlier this month recollected her rise to fame with the Telegraph: "I got a job as an understudy [in A Month in the Country, starring Helen Mirren] for $150 a week. I was living on someone’s kitchen floor on a futon for $400 a month. I was so broke I’d eat noodles with canola oil and salt; not even butter."