It’s a hardship I can’t appreciate, living with a husband who has a steady source of income. But I got to experience a small taste of this reality last month, when along with 150 other people from St Paul’s Anglican in Sydney’s north west, I spent a week eating on a budget equivalent to the Newstart allowance.

The challenge was part of Share The Benefit, a five-week event created by Anglicare to give Christians a taste of poverty in Australia. Participants record how much money they spend on food in an average week, then live on a reduced amount equivalent to the Newstart allowance. They donate the difference between the two budgets to Anglicare.

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The programme – which also includes Bible studies on poverty – was introduced last year and has been run by seven churches in Sydney suburbs such as Vaucluse, Kiama and Carlingford. I took part because I wanted to challenge my own assumptions about life on government benefits. A week on a reduced food budget is only a glimpse into the complexities of poverty, says Andrew Ford, director of pastoral care and mission development at Anglicare, but it’s a start. “It’s sometimes hard to understand there are people who live on the edges of society … rather than just having people dole out money from their pockets, we wanted them to understand the situation of the people [Anglicare] interacts with,” he says.

Ford is right; many of us have no idea how much some people struggle. Households that rely on allowances such as the Disability Support Pension, the single parenting payment and Newstart live on less than $1000 a fortnight. After subtracting money for rent, transport and utilities, this leaves a family like mine – two adults and two young children – with $110.23 a week to spend on groceries: significantly less than the $250 I usually spend feeding our family.

With this amount, I began the challenge on Monday at my local Aldi for the weekly grocery shop. Budgeting is familiar terrain for my family, but I wasn’t used to shopping solely on a week-by-week basis. Even though bulk buying is more economical in the long run, I couldn’t afford to buy 1kg of cheese or a 10kg sack of rice. When you have just over $100 to feed the family, $30 for a bag of rice is a stretch. I also couldn’t afford the incidental items I usually purchase. Dessert was off the menu. I avoided my favourite health food shops, wondering how people with food allergies survive when specialty items are so expensive. My kids howled in protest when we walked past our bakery without buying finger buns, giving me insight into the guilt parents might feel when their children go without.

These sacrifices have an emotional impact – something which Dr Wendy Moran, education consultant and research fellow at the Australian Catholic University, discovered when she participated in the programme. The mother of three children aged 21, 18 and 15 was given $193 to spend on groceries instead of her usual budget of $380. “My daughter had several school parties and wasn’t able to bring anything. We went to a friend’s house and brought nothing, when we would usually bring a bottle of wine,” says Dr Moran. “Socially it has an impact because you can’t be ‘fair’ in taking turns to shout food and we Australians are big on that. You pay back things; it’s very strong in our culture. I hated not being generous and my pride was affected.”

Gabrielle Upton, NSW Minister for Family and Community Services, observed a similar sentiment when she visited St Michael’s Vaucluse last year during Share the Benefit. “Some participants … found themselves unusually grateful to be offered free cups of coffee by friends and colleagues and that being grateful for such things was a new and somewhat uncomfortable experience,” she reflected in a parliamentary address. “Others said that they understood why people on the Newstart allowance would withdraw from regular social activities as they could not afford to participate.”

I had a similar experience while on the allowance. Last year, Families Minister Jenny Macklin controversially claimed she could live on the Newstart allowance of $38 a day. There is some truth to her claim; you will not die of starvation living off the Newstart allowance. By the end of the week, we were still able to eat, albeit cobbled together meals in smaller portions than we are used to. But although you can survive, there are few resources for much else. There is no money for going out with friends. You have less consumer power to choose nutritious food (a kilo of Homebrand chicken nuggets is cheaper than a kilo of fresh chicken). There is nothing left over to save, no financial buffer. Although my food budget was limited, I was still able to take my son to the paediatrician and buy petrol. I would not have been able to afford these things if I was living solely on benefits.

How are Christians to respond to such hardship? Share the Benefit’s Bible studies, based on the gospels and the book of Acts, are a helpful way to kick-start this conversation. Ford says some Christians found the studies sparked talk about what their churches are doing to address poverty in the community. In my own growth group, the studies challenged our unwitting stereotypes of those who live on benefits. “Living as a disciple of Jesus isn’t just about fitting into normal social structures or believing a set of truth statements,” says Ford. “It should actually transform our lives, change our priorities and change the way we think about the people around us.”

A restricted food budget wasn’t enough to fully comprehend financial hardship, but it was an effective entry point into the experience of poverty and a challenge to – as Jesus did – love those in need.