The Giving Hands

This guest post is brought to you by uncannyman.

On September 25th 2008, just a few days from today, world leaders will come together in New York on for a high level event, convened by the UN Secretary-General and the President of the UN General Assembly to renew their commitments to achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 and to set out concrete plans and practical steps for action.

Now maybe some of us are aware of the Millennium Development Goals, maybe some of us aren’t. I for one willingly admit I had no clue about the MDG until very recently when I started reading more about poverty and on the work being committed by leaders around the world to address it and a number of other serious issues plaguing our world today.

It’s important for you to know, in case you haven’t known or heard already, what the MDG Plan is all about.

The MDG was signed sometime in September 2000. It’s primary objective was to achieve 8 international development goals by 2015 which include:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat AIDS/Malaria and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop global partnership for development

As you can see from the goals above, almost half of the problems that are affecting our world today has its roots in poverty. From AIDS, to degrading maternal health and child mortality and poor accessibility to education, all these issues can be traced back to the obvious problem of poverty.

In my next entry, I will further elaborate and discuss on how far the MDG has progressed in terms of eradicating poverty and hunger.

But I shall leave you with some facts to ponder on:

1. Recent increases in the price of food have had a direct and adverse effect on the poor and are expected to push many more people – an estimated 100 million – into absolute poverty.
2. New estimates released by the World Bank in August 2008 show that the number of people in the developing world living in extreme poverty may be higher than previously thought. Using a new threshold for extreme poverty now set at $1.25 a day (purchasing power parity) in 2005 prices, the Bank concludes that there were 1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty in 2005.
3. Over a 25-year period, the poverty rate in East Asia fell from nearly 80% to under 20%. In sub-Saharan Africa, the poverty rate remained constant at around 50%.

While there may be a few encouraging signs, the overall look is still grim, yet efforts are being made to help mitigate this problem; more on the next entry.

The uncannyman is part of this year’s Blog Action Day. For a long time he has lived in an oblivious state, assuming that poverty is somebody else’s problem and it’s been taken care of by the international committee. However his current readings and studying on poverty are starting to prove otherwise. There is still a lot of work left to do and he wants to educate the masses on the dire state the world is in and what we can do to help. He blogs at uncannyphilosophy.