Millenium Development Goals

One of the best ways for us to end some of the problems in the world have already been laid out by the UN in the year 2000. These are the eight biggest problems in the world, and this is a great framework for our end goals. If you have never read these before, please take the time to read them now. Thanks.

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
- Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day
- Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people
- Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger

2. Achieve universal primary education
- Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.

3. Promote gender equality and empower women
- Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015.

4. Reduce child mortality
- Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate.

5. Improve maternal health
- Reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio.
- Achieve, by 2015, universal access to reproductive health

6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
- Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS.
- Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it.
- Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.

7. Ensure environmental sustainability
- Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes; reverse loss of environmental resources.
- Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss
- Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation (for more information see the entry on water supply).
- By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum-dwellers
8. Develop a global partnership for development
- Develop further an open trading and financial system that is rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory. Includes a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction—nationally and internationally.
- Address the special needs of the least developed countries. This includes tariff and quota free access for their exports; enhanced programme of debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries; and cancellation of official bilateral debt; and more generous official development assistance for countries committed to poverty reduction.
- Address the special needs of landlocked and small island developing States.
- Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term.
- In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries.
- In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications

Keep Score - See the Progress

One of the important reasons for keeping a social justice scoreboard of sorts is this: we need to see our progress. We have to see how we are doing. We have to see if we are beating these problems or if they are growing. We have to see how we are doing in this fight. So we need to keep score.

Think about it: how are we doing right now? Are there more people starving in the world this year than last year? Are there more people dying of AIDS in the world this year than last year? Are the numbers growing or are they decreasing? We need to define the problem (the number of people that we need to help), and then we need to define our progress (if the number of people that we need to help is going up or down).

With as much money and publicity as some of these problems get, we really have no idea if we are actually making a difference or not. The ONE campaign has a mission of "making poverty history". They have all kinds of celebrities and all kinds of cool commercials and merchandise and things like that. And, really, they are doing a great job of awareness and of marketing. Seriously, I am behind them 100%. But, how are they doing though? Is poverty ending? Has it even gone down?

We need to have a social justice scoreboard so that we know how we are doing in this fight against social ills and social injustices. We need to know our progress.

We have to define the problem, and we have to know how we are doing against it.

Need for a Social Justice Scoreboard

I was watching t.v. the other day when a news station came on to do a little appeal for the Idaho Food Bank which frustrated me to no end. The lady on the station was talking about a food drive that was going on, and she ended the spot by saying as a final appeal and the Idaho Food Bank’s slogan “Because so many are hungry”.

This is a chronic problem with people in the nonprofit, humanitarian, and social society type of sectors. They have good intentions, but they are so vague that these good intentions will never result in any long-term successes or realistic differences. Let me explain. What in the world does it mean that “so many are hungry”? How many are hungry? Who are they? Where are they? How much food do we need in order to ensure that everyone is fed? If we really want these problems to end, it is ridiculous for us to simply say “Because so many are hungry”. And yet we do that all the time – with a ton of different things.

Think about it. “There are people starving in Africa.” “We need to help out because there are so many people dying of Aids in Africa.” “There are tons of people who don’t have clean water.” And on and on and on. But these statements do not do anything! They are simply vague generalities that do not get to the heart of the issue much less give us any direction in ending it. We have to narrow these things down. We have to find out how many, who, where, when, and what. We have to get specific. We have to get detailed. We have to get some type of a scoreboard.

A social justice scoreboard.

So we can meet our end goal of ending these problems.

End Goal. In it to End it.

In it to end it. In it to end it. In it to end it.

There should be no other way for us to be going after poverty and AIDS and malaria and clean water and starvation. We should not just be trying to make a difference or trying to take a chunk out of this problem or that problem. But we need to be in it to end it. We have to have total elimination as our end goal. If that isn’t our end goal, what else should it be? We have to have the end goal of fully eliminating these problems. There is no other way to attack them but fully, completely, and wholly.

In it to end it. We have to be in it to end it. That has to be our end goal.