People > Poverty

Over the week, we have been talking about poverty, wealth and the gap in between. Now, I am to make a quick summary of an organisation that battles to eliminate poverty. I have chosen the organisation Make Poverty History. Make Poverty History is an organisation made to assist people in heavily poverty stricken countries. Make Poverty History is a coalition of more than 70 aid and development organisations, community and faith-based groups. The organisation has been set up by some of the wealthier countries associated with the UN. Unfortunately, I was not able to access any information about the programs that they run to achieve their goals, which, for future reference are to:
-Eradicate poverty & hunger
-Achieve universal education
-Promote gender equality
-Reduce child mortality
-Improve maternal health
-Combat diseases
-Work on environmental sustainability
-Global partnership.

My next task is to personally rank the UN Millennium Development Goals. These goals are also essentially the goals of the Make Poverty History organisation. Here is a list of the goals in my prioritised order.
-End poverty and hunger
-Achieve universal education
-Improve child health
-Improve maternal health
-Achieve gender equality
-Work on environmental sustainability
-Combat HIV/AIDS
-Achieve global partnership.
All of these goals are very important to the development of the earth and its people. We cannot just make the world all happy and equal and poverty free by completing just one or two of these goals.
The reasons that I put the goals in this order are simple.
Poverty and hunger are the main pressing issues. If people can't eat, people can't live. People living in poverty find life so much harder than people with spare money in their pockets. But to end poverty and hunger, we need to improve universal education. If people are educated, they can find and excel in a job much easier than uneducated people. But simply education can not eliminate poverty. Child and maternal health both need to get better everywhere, especially countries like Chad, Afghanistan and Congo - the three countries with the highest rate of infant mortality, and also three of the countries with the lowest life expectancy. These three countries, (especially Afghanistan and Chad have three of the highest maternal mortality rates, showing that the two issues can be somewhat linked. Basically, health in general must improve. Gender equality, one of my personal highest valued issues is also most likely needed to help the world. If a woman were to try and provide for her family, or herself in a third world country (or a 'developing country' if you prefer) she would most likely find some difficulty in this - somewhat harder than if a man were to do this. If women can't provide for their families, their families stay poor, and they slip into (or stay in) poverty. Now, not to get all 'hippie' about this, but environmental sustainability is important for a great number of things. Health is affected if sustainability is not first thought about, resources disappear, making essentials harder to find and more expensive, and of course, climate change kicks in and kills everyone. Combating HIV/AIDS would have ranked higher in my list if it was simply "improving health" but HIV/AIDS are not the only thing people are dying from. It is a small problem compared to all of the other life threatening health issues in the world. Lastly, I listed "Achieve global partnership". Global partnership is certainly important for poorer countries to maybe be helped a little bit by the richer countries like USA, Britain, Australia, (I might have mention Japan if this was written last week, but probably not so much right now)and other well off countries.

*insert witty summing up line here*
-Written by me - Darcy.