Engaging Congregations in Achieving the Millennium Development Goals

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Engaging Congregations in Achieving the
Millennium Development Goals

• Jon Singletary
• Baylor Center for Family Community Ministries
• Seeds of Hope, Council of Stewards

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What are MDGs?

• At the Millennium Summit in 2000, the leaders of
  almost 200 countries adopted the UN Millennium
  Declaration, making a commitment to a new global
  partnership to reduce extreme poverty and setting
  out a series of targets, with a deadline of 2015,
  that have become known as the Millennium
  Development Goals.
• The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the
  world's targets for addressing extreme poverty in
  its many dimensions - income, hunger, disease,
  shelter, and exclusion - while promoting gender
  equality, education, and environmental
  sustainability. They also promote basic human
  rights - the rights of each person on the planet
  to health, education, shelter, and security.

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• However, these are not merely secular goals.
  Jesus calls us to care for the poor and promote
  justice for the oppressed. From his command to
  love our neighbor to his reminder that he came so
  that we might have life, we hear calls to
  faithful action as his disciples.
• The Millennium Development Goals offer us a
  response to Jesus call to care. They reflect
  Gods passionate desire for service and love, for
  justice and mercy.
• Because charity is not enough, we see in these
  goals an opportunity to embody Gods justice in a
  suffering world.

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• Goal 1 Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty
• Goal 2 Achieve Universal Primary Education
• Goal 3 Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
• Goal 4 Reduce Child Mortality
• Goal 5 Improve Maternal Health
• Goal 6 Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other
  diseases
• Goal 7 Ensure Environmental Sustainability
• Goal 8 Develop a Global Partnership for
  Development

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Global Economic Principles for Reducing Extreme
Poverty

• Reducing Debt
• Improving Trade
• Increasing Effective Aid
• Each of these factors has an impact on how we
  address the MDGs

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Consider the situation in Zambia

• For many years, copper in Zambia was used to
  create wealth. When copper prices fell in the
  1970s, the country found itself borrowing money
  and building up international debts.
• By the 1990s, debt repayment programs prevented
  Zambia from investing in education, health care
  and other resources to help strengthen its own
  economy, such as roads.
• Trading copper-based products remains a challenge
  because of tariffs charged by wealthy nations on
  the import of manufactured copper products trade
  is not free or fair.
• Cotton, another Zambian export, isnt traded
  successfully because U.S. European agribusiness
  subsidies keep cotton prices artificially low.

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• Today, Zambia has received some debt reduction
  assistance, allowing it to develop some
  infrastructure. However, the nation must still
  spend twice as much on repaying debt as it spends
  on education and health care combined.
• Effective aid from the U.S., in the form of
  poverty-focussed development assistance, has
  provided borehole wells, anti-malarial
  medications, and mosquito nets.
• Here we see examples of how the impact of debt,
  trade, and aid can make a difference.
• In a sub-saharan country, like Zambia, the MDGs
  are being promoted to offer sustainable
  development, debt reduction, aid to strengthen
  health care for malaria and HIV/AIDS treatment,
  education to empower women, locally grown and
  traded foods safe water, and an overall
  reduction in poverty.

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Websites for more info

• E4GR - Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation
  (www.e4gr.org)
• CBF - Cooperative Baptist Fellowship
  (www.thefellowship.info)
• Micah Challenge (www.micah.org)
• The ONE Campaign (www.one.org)
• Bread for the World (www.bread.org)

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Christian Education Resources

• Gods Mission in the World An Ecumenical
  Christian Study Guide on Global Poverty and the
  Millennium Development Goals (www.episcopalchurch
  .org/eppn)
• Eradicating Global Poverty A Christian Study
  Guide on the MDGs (Friendship Press)