The problem with the two-dollar challenge

I read a really good blog post about the "Do-Gooder Industrial Complex," which offered alternative outlooks on aid, poverty, volunteerism, etc. (specifically in an international context) to the ones fostered by the Do-Gooder Industrial Complex. I was nodding vigorously as I read. But the article ended with a link to the "Two-Dollar Challenge." Almost half the world's population lives on less than two dollars a day, the site says. It exhorts readers to try living on two dollars a day for a couple of days in order to "push ... outside your comfort zone to critically engage with, and empathetically reevaluate global poverty and your role in its end."

This challenge strikes me as wrong in so many ways.

( problems with the two-dollar challenge )

What would be a better way to push people outside their comfort zones and get them to "empathetically reevaluate global poverty"? I'd recommend one of the following challenges:

Try living on the number of calories much of the world have to live on. This is a much more honest assessment of how their resources match their needs. US average caloric intake is 3770.[ETA: dubious. The source is the UK Daily Mail. The US Centers for Disease Control estimates a still quite hearty high 2000s (Source)] In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the average caloric intake is 1590 (Source) Muslim refugees in the Central African Republic only were getting 850 calories a day (source).

This challenge already exists: 850 Calories

Or, try drinking, cooking, and bathing with only three to five gallons of water a day. That's how much water people in sub-Saharan Africa live on, on average, per day. Americans, by comparison, use 100–150 gallons of water a day. (Source) You probably wouldn't have time in your day to also carry this water the hour or two hours it takes many young people in different parts of the world to fetch water home, but you could add that in as a bonus.

Well! That was quite a rant. Glad to get that off my chest.