U N Millennium Goals
posted February 19th, 2007 at 4:03 pm by Betty
At the Millennium Summit in September 2000 the largest gathering of world leaders in history adopted the UN Millennium Declaration, committing their nations to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and setting out a series of time-bound targets, with a deadline of 2015, that have become known as the Millennium Development Goals.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the world’s time-bound and quantified targets for addressing extreme poverty in its many dimensions-income poverty, hunger, disease, lack of adequate shelter, and exclusion-while promoting gender equality, education, and environmental sustainability. They are also basic human rights-the rights of each person on the planet to health, education, shelter, and security.
Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty
Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education
Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
Goal 4: Reduce Child Mortality
Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases
Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability
Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development
The world has made significant progress in achieving many of the Goals. Between 1990 and 2002 average overall incomes increased by approximately 21 percent. The number of people in extreme poverty declined by an estimated 130 million 1. Child mortality rates fell from 103 deaths per 1,000 live births a year to 88. Life expectancy rose from 63 years to nearly 65 years. An additional 8 percent of the developing world’s people received access to water. And an additional 15 percent acquired access to improved sanitation services.
But progress has been far from uniform across the world-or across the Goals. There are huge disparities across and within countries. Within countries, poverty is greatest for rural areas, though urban poverty is also extensive, growing, and underreported by traditional indicators.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the epicenter of crisis, with continuing food insecurity, a rise of extreme poverty, stunningly high child and maternal mortality, and large numbers of people living in slums, and a widespread shortfall for most of the MDGs. Asia is the region with the fastest progress, but even there hundreds of millions of people remain in extreme poverty, and even fast-growing countries fail to achieve some of the non-income Goals. Other regions have mixed records, notably Latin America, the transition economies, and the Middle East and North Africa, often with slow or no progress on some of the Goals and persistent inequalities undermining progress on others.
For more information visit The Millennium Project Website.
School of St. Jude Blog
School of St Jude Website
In 2002 a young lady, Gemma Rice (now Gemma Sisia), from a sheep farm in Australia, opened a small school in Northern Tanzania with the help of her family, friends and local Rotary Club. What started with only a handful of children is now a thriving school of approx 850. This school has the potential to really influence the quality of Tanzania’s future leaders. A great example of how one person can make a difference.
extreme poverty
millennium development goals
spirituality
interfaith
religion
culture
This entry was posted on Monday, February 19th, 2007 at 4:03 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 20th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
Hi Betty,
It’s great to see you mention the School of St Jude. A successful project like this is an oasis of hope in difficult circumstances. As you say, it is an example of how one person can make a difference.
There are interesting ways that Gemma Sisia’s story exemplifies your metaphor of an outsider, though she is not an outsider who has been mislabelled and denigrated.
Gemma is an Australian who grew up with seven older brothers! She has chosen to live the life of an outsider in Tanzania, in order to fulfil her life’s desire which was to help others. She has commented that although she has adopted Tanzania as her home, married a Tanzanian and has two small sons, she will never be African. This doesn’t bother her, she accepts that this is the fact of the matter. Instead she gets on with bringing her huge dream to reality.
Her school has 850 students this year, she is building a second campus to be a Secondary School, and also building a boarding school. Perhaps she is one of the lucky ones who has found the life work to match her talents!
If any of your readers are moved to support a successful project that is effective in Fighting Poverty Through Education in one of the world’s poorest countries, I would encourage them to take a look at this project.
My blog — www.schoolstjude.blogspot.com
School — www.schoolofstjude.co.tz
February 21st, 2007 at 11:03 am
Dear Gillian,
Thank you for responding to our mentioning the School of St. Jude. Gemma Sisia’s story is inspiring. She followed her dream and it became a reality. We celebrate her accomplishments!
I have visited your blog and the website of the school and enjoyed the tour. I was espcially taken by the recent school picture - with the happy faces of children who seem to intuit that they are being cared for and loved and given a great opportunity.
Education is a basic human right and, as you say, effective in fighting poverty. The work you do is tremendously important now only in the Now but also for future generations.
And education is not only for the young but for those of us who have had all the advantages of higher education - education is a life-long process -we get stuck when we stop learning and think we have all the answers. That’s when the trouble starts - when we are doing all the talking and none of the listening. Listening to voices across the globe is a great privilege.
I hope that we can continue to communicate. Who knows what can happen when people cross continental boundaries and make connections.
Many blessings and peace,
Betty Adam