I don't think I know very much about experiencing hardship. Any hardship - including the many associated with poverty - has to be experienced to be fully known.
In the same way that watching James Bond movies helps us understand what its like to be a secret agent, doing the 40 hour famine helps us understand what its like to live in poverty.
It doesn't.
But going without food for 40 hours does allow us to feel physical pain, and maybe it helps us better realise just how wrong it is for one billion people to be hungry.
I read Matt Darvas' blog in which he said he would sleep in the cold.
The cold is something I thought about while in Nepal, but not much since. I tried sleeping cold on the weekend and I began to understand what cold meant better than I did when I was actually in Nepal, rugged up in my thermals and jacket, watching shivering children.
But how comforting it was to know that I would not always have to sleep cold and shivering! Hope is a strong thing.
And hope is exactly what we are trying to give to those who sleep in the cold every night and wake up with nothing for breakfast.