Millennium Development Goals - MDG Blogging Day

Today is the MDG (Millennium Development Goals) blogging day so here I am sharing it with you all.
The Millennium Development Goals are a set of, well, goals developed by the United Nations to end poverty and hunger and combat AIDS as well as to promote global education, gender equality, child and maternal health, environmental sustainability, and global partnership. So basically all my causes all wrapped up in a nice little package :)
Here's a link to the UN site about the MDGs - http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
You might also like the ONE Campaign site (yes, I have one of those incredibly sexy white bracelets!) - http://www.one.org/

I think these are all goals that, regardless of our political or religious beliefs, we can all support.
My goal was to keep this non-partisan and secular but I found this blog entry from Rev. Mike Kinman who is the Executive Director of the group Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation and I wanted to share it. I think he has some powerful things to say.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

"For World MDG Blogging Day: A Bailout We Can Believe In" -- by the Rev. Mike Kinman

In moments of crisis ... real or perceived ... the United States has shown that money is no object.

Often those moments have been crises of security. When we went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, we were told that critical security concerns superceded the financial burden that would follow. Now this week, a $700 billion Wall Street bailout is on the table ... and, once again, we are told that the crisis supercedes the financial burden that will follow.

More than a billion people live on less than $1 a day.

Nearly 30,000 children die a day of preventable, treatable causes due to extreme poverty.

More than 100 million school-aged children aren't in school.

Women around the world are disproportionately excluded from educational and economic opportunities.

If this isn't a crisis, I'm not sure what a crisis is. And we have made it clear that in a crisis -- and this one is real -- money is no object.

Today, while our leaders on Capitol Hill and in the White House are debating a $700 billion bailout for Wall Street, in New York City, world leaders are meeting to take stock of how we are doing on meeting the Millennium Development Goals. Here's a hint -- not so well.

On nearly every goal, we're behind where we need to be to reach them by the 2015 target date. It's not because the technology isn't there. It's because we lack the political will to do here what we have been willing to do elsewhere -- put our resources where the crisis is.

When the MDGs were agreed to by every UN member nation eight years ago, the World Bank estimated it would cost $40 billion - $60 billion a year to make them happen. That's a total price tag for the 15 years of $600 billion - $900 billion.

So as EGR's contribution to World MDG Blogging Day, we offer a simple proposal. If there's going to be a bailout, let's give the money to the people who really need it the most. The ones who are literally dying waiting for our help.

Let's keep our promise to make the Millennium Development Goals a reality. While we're ready to write nearly a trillion dollar check to Wall Street, let's shave $60 billion a year off the top and give a bailout to those who really need it.

Let's bail out the extreme poor.

This is a serious proposal. Until we realize that global extreme poverty is a crisis that dwarfs all others by comparison, we will never take the action necessary to heal a broken world.

This is a moral imperative that has gone unheeded too long.

We're not saying ignore the financial crisis on Wall Street ... we're saying if money is available for them, then it's available for people who need it even more.

The Rev. Mike Kinman is the executive director of Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation.

In case you'd like to read more on the EGR, here is a link to the blog I found that on: http://www.ringsurf.com/ring_browser.php?id=1655785

Just some food for thought.