News Brief

Christian Aid offers chance to swop lives

-4/5/04

An aid agency is offering the chance to start again, and find out what your life could be like if you were born somewhere else in the world.

Christian Aid has set up a web site that enable the user to transform their life within seconds. LifeSwitch.org is being launched in the run up to Christian Aid Week 9-15 May.

The site enables the user to swap their life with someone else's in a different country, under the slogan 'The true you can be the new you'.

The participant is invited to choose a dream country for a new life and submit details about themselves. The site then matches the users profile with someone else's in the country that has been chosen.

Suranne Jones, who plays Coronation Street's Karen Macdonald, was one of the first people to give it a go. "I was yearning for a change and a bit more sun", said the award winning actress. However, having entered her details Suranne discovered that she would have been a rice farmer.

"I was transformed into a young woman in Sierra Leone. My life had not been a happy one. Having been assaulted during the ten-year civil war by a group of soldiers, I was driven out of my home. But there was hope, I approached Christian Aid, and they helped me return to my village and become a rice farmer." she said.

Sara Chamberlain, Christian Aid's web manager, said: "We take no responsibility for users of LifeSwitch catapulted into a life they may not have expected. While some users may find themselves living a life of luxury in the golden sands of the Dominican Republic, others will 'experience' the day-to-day struggle of poor people in developing countries."

Christian Aid Week is the UK's longest running and most successful door-to-door fundraising week. It started in 1957. Last year more than £14.3 million was raised with the help of over 350,000 volunteers.

It aims to raise money for people like Hawa and Patience. Hawa is a real rice farmer in Sierra Leone and was forced out of her home during the civil war five years ago, and Patience is from Zambia, who is a widow and HIV positive.

Thanks to money raised through Christian Aid, Hawa was able to move back home and has just had her first successful harvest.

Christian Aid's support means that Patience has a volunteer carer who helps with chores and gives her medicine and food. Hawa's and Patience's stories depict the theme of Christian Aid Week, which is: 'We believe in life before death. Life is for living, not merely surviving.'