When I first learned about the Millennium Development Goals, I was pretty skeptical. Even Jesus said “You will always have the poor among you.” How would these high-minded and undoubtedly myopic set of goals do what many other development goals had not done: succeed?
Here are the goals:
- To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
- To achieve universal primary education
- To promote gender equality and empower women
- To reduce child mortality
- To improv maternal health
- To combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
- To ensure environmental sustainability
- To develop a global partnership for development
But it turns out that the MDGs are the most successful anti-poverty program in human history. In the coming posts I’ll talk more about each one, and remarkable progress that has been made because of the MDGs.