Christian organizations and Good Samaritans around the world are joining together this week as part of an awareness and fundraising campaign that hopes to impact the lives of over a billion people globally.

The campaign, known as Live Below the Line (LBL), is an initiative begun by the Global Poverty Project and has since morphed into an international effort in which people from all over the world – from Nigeria to Haiti – live in solidarity with the world's 1.4 billion people who live below the World Bank's definition of the extreme poverty line.

Participants of LBL live off of $1.50 a day – the equivalent of extreme poverty – from May 7-11 to experience firsthand the challenges people who live in destitute poverty face on a daily basis. more >>

A California megachurch is hoping to gather 16 tons of food during the month of May for its annual drive to benefit a local food bank.

The Rock Church of San Diego, with an attendance exceeding 12,000, has pledged to donate 32,500 pounds of food to the Jacobs & Cushman San Diego Food Bank. Miles McPherson, pastor of The Rock Church, told The Christian Post that this was the third year that his church was involved in the food drive.

"This initiative is part of the Rock's community outreach campaign, bringing people together to address human needs and transform lives in San Diego and the world," said McPherson. more >>

Actor Stephen Baldwin has teamed up with talk show host and "Secret Millionaire" alumna Dani Johnson in an effort to feed orphans around the world in a campaign called "2012 in 2012," Baldwin announced Monday.

Baldwin and conservative commentator Kevin McCullough are using their talk show media conglomerate, XtreMEDIA, to launch the project "to rescue 2012 orphans in the year of 2012." They are teaming up with Christian ministries King's Ransom Foundation and Food for Orphans for the project.

"When I toured the places these children sleep and live in, I couldn't help but be moved to do something about it. My whole family saw with our own eyes children who were dying or would die soon, simply because they had no food," stated Baldwin in the announcement from XtreMEDIA. more >>

WASHINGTON -- An evangelical leader whose organization sponsored a prayer event on environmentalism believes that global poverty is strongly connected to man-made climate change.

Evangelical Environmental Network President Mitch Hescox, who worked in the energy business before becoming a pastor, told The Christian Post that combating man-made climate change is where his desire to evangelize and to care for the poor meet.

"God called me to it because I have a desperate passion for caring for evangelizing people and for caring for the poor," said Hescox. "How we care about creation care determines how we care about human life. Because the impacts of poverty, of disease, water shortages, is all related to how we steward the creation." more >>

In the past, the church has not been a major player in the fight against malaria, but World Vision, along with Christian leaders and churches across the U.S., is working to unite the faith community in its war against the disease responsible for the deaths of millions of children.

Malaria is a completely preventable disease that can be caused by a single mosquito bite, yet its impact on Africa has been enormous.

Malaria is estimated to take the life of a child on the African continent every 60 seconds and remains the leading cause of death for children under the age of five, but a simple bed net – costing $6 dollars – can prevent children from succumbing to the deadly disease. When properly supplied, the insecticide -treated bed nets have proven to significantly reduce the spread of malaria. more >>

The worst drought in 60 years has hit the Horn of Africa, taking a terrible toll on crops, livestock, and people. Parts of Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia have extremely limited access to food aid and other relief. Desperate conditions forced more than 150,000 people to flee into Kenya and Ethiopia from Somalia, burdening fragile host communities and overcrowding refugee camps. Refugees fled not only the drought, which has turned green pastures into golden fields of dust, but also the militant terrorist group Al Shabab, which seeks to impose its rule in Somalia through unspeakable violence and terror.

Those who have suffered are people like Ahamd Issaq, chief of a village called Sala-Jama. When he was a boy the elders of his village named the droughts that came once every 20 years. But now the droughts come so often they don't give them names.

Ahamad is a goat herder. Like his ancestors, his days are governed by the rise and fall of the sun. The sun that beat down last fall dried up much of the water supply and what water that was left was very salty, making it difficult for his herd to survive. If it wasn't for emergency water supplies provided by public and private organizations, including faith-based groups like Latter-day Saint (LDS) Charities, Ahamad and many others would not have survived to see drought conditions ease. Working with LDS, IRD provided relief to 22 vulnerable communities in southern and eastern Ethiopia, including Ahamad's, through water trucking and provision of water purification supplies. Last fall IRD and LDS supplied the emergency water needs of 31,000 people in severely affected villages. more >>