This blog's purpose is to connect in an every widening and deepening manner with others across the globe in support of the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals.
Now that the Millennium Milestones Wiki is finished, I am going to start to focus on another project related to this effort and that is working with
I have participated in their blogging events before, but this is the first time that I have tried to promote a BloggersUnite event myself in support of the Stand Up Take Action End Poverty Now! campaign. I have to admit that so far the participation is limited to only two other bloggers (who are greatly appreciated).
Part of the problem may be competition. Seems that October is the month of actions against poverty and hunger. Below are other BloggersUnite actions taking place in October of this year. I have decided to take "the-more-the-merry" approach to this, figuring we are all supporting the same basic cause and have joined up with each. I have also included them on the calendar at the Milestones for a New Millennium wiki. My hope is that people participating in each of the events will take the same approach.
Of course another part of the problem is that I have not done a good enough job of promoting the event on BloggersUnite or other venues. That will be one the the next things on my to-do list to support the Millennium Development Goals.
I am back to posting to this blog, hopefully on a regular and more frequent basis. Although I raised a number of different aspects of the Millennium Development Goals that will need to be addressed to see their successful implantation, the most critical one is still funding, only things are getting worse. Two sources on the same subject, one from Change.org and the other from the Millennium Campaign.
It seems like everyone is facing a massive budget gap this year, and the United Nations is no different. Of the $9 billion that the UN was supposed to receive for humanitarian aid this year, the organization has only received half. And that's despite the fact that more people - some say upwards of 43 million people - are relying on UN aid than ever before. Humanitarian Relief blogger Michael Kleinman studies the budget shortfall at the UN and how this might impact humanitarian relief throughout the globe. Turns out that the problem is partly about a lack of money, and partly about a lack of political will. (Read More)
Directly from the United States Millennium Campaign which reported that on June 23, 2009 , the United Nations Millennium Campaign released an analysis showing that since the inception of aid (overseas development assistance) almost 50 years ago, donor countries have given some $2 trillion in aid. Yet over the past year, $18 trillion has been found globally to bail out banks and other financial institutions.
The stark contrast between the money dispersed to the world's desperately poor after 49 years of painstaking summits and negotiations and the staggering sums found virtually overnight to bail out the creators of the global economic crisis makes it impossible for governments to any longer claim that the world can't find the money to help the 50,000 people who are dying of extreme poverty every day," said Salil Shetty, Director of the United Nations Millennium Campaign. "This is a straightforward question of political will. Rich countries' priorities will become crystal clear at this week's summit on the economic crisis, where we hope they will finally deliver on the aid they have repeatedly pledged but not delivered to those who need it most."
The Campaign is therefore calling on donor countries to immediately and unconditionally do the following:
Agree to a timetable to accelerate delivery of their aid commitments.
Make rapid progress toward achieving the Paris Declaration and Accra Agenda to simplify and streamline aid, including a clear timetable for implementation of existing commitments.
Reduce and/or eliminate all trade-distorting agricultural subsidies.
Ensure that poor countries are fully represented in all decision making bodies and in the restructuring of the global financial infrastructure.
Millennium Campaign is calling on poor countries to immediately do the following:
that national development policies and plans are pro-poor and focused on women and excluded groups.
Prioritize expenditures on the Millennium Development Goals.
Ensure accountability and transparency in the management of public money.
Prioritize domestic resource mobilization.
Go to www.youtube.com/mcampaign to watch the videoclip.
This is the link tothe the FrontPage of the new Wiki Milestones for a New Millennium
This is self-promotional, but I finally have the new PBWorks wiki ready for official unveiling. This is why I have not been paying nearly enough attention to this blog (that and real life/day job). Although I have included connections to the new wiki on this site for some time, it is only now that it is complete enough to make fully public. Of course being a wiki, it in never really complete simply a work in progress and continual improvement.
We all see the problems afflicting the world. They are the problems we each face ourselves in some small way each day, except for most of us reading this they are not matters of life or death or threaten to relegate our lives and the lives of our children to the prison of poverty. We see the abundance of this world, yet so many living without hope and wonder what path that we as individuals can take to bring about long lasting change to what are global and systemic problems.
The United Nation's Millennium Development Goals are such a path. Originally defined through the cooperative agreement of 189 nations when they signed onto the Millennium Declaration, they are the policy implementation objectives of numerous global organizations specializing in a variety of policy concerns, the rallying cry of hundreds of advocacy, philanthropic, non-profit/non-governmental, change-agent organizations and they are for over 116 million people coming together all over the world last year, a vision and a pathway for a better future for all people on this planet we share.
This wiki and my blogare my personal social media toolsfor connecting to otherson the World Wide Webin countries across the globe.
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