Living on One Dollar

I just finished teaching a unit surrounding the documentary Living on One Dollar and I cannot recommend this documentary enough! During this unit my students were captivated by the lives of the families living in the small town of Peña Blanca, Guatemala. We had meaningful classroom discussions about poverty, clean water, necessities vs. desires and education. 

Below are some the the activities that I used with my classes during this unit. 

• Have your students take a survey (I use Survey Monkey) to get them thinking about some of the themes of the film and how they relate to their lives. Some of my questions included:
  • ¿Tienes acceso a agua dulce en tu casa?
  • ¿Cuántas comidas comes cada día?
  • ¿Sufres de malnutrición o comes comida saludable?
  • ¿Cómo gana dinero tu familia?
  • ¿Vas a la escuela?
  • ¿En el futuro quieres ir a una universidad?
• When I was watching the documentary I was astounded by the statistics of world poverty. Have your students guess how many people in the world are living on less than one dollar a day. My students were shocked when I told them that the correct answer is 1.1 billion. 
• Have students read the infographic below to provide them with more information about Guatemala. I also had my students compare and contrast Guatemala with the United States (information for the US is in the worksheet below). 

• Guatemala's national minimum wage is 2,644.50 quetzales a month--currently about $360 USD. Have your students pretend that they are the sole provider for a family of four and have them do a WebQuest to budget what they would buy for their family on this budget. This website has information on current exchange rates and this website has average prices for food, housing, and other necessities in Guatemala.

• Below is the vocabulary list I used for this unit.

vocabulario_clave_--_living_on_one_dollar.pdf
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After watching the documentary my students brainstormed ways that they could be the catalyst for global change. The website Living on One has some great resources for these discussions, as well as current information about the families in the documentary.