The UN Millennium Goals: Where Are We Now?

The United Nations Millennium Development Goals can be overwhelming. When I first heard about them, I thought, “Those sound like great goals! But there’s nothing I can do about them.” I have since found out how wrong I was. The basic goal, set in the year 2000, is to end poverty by 2015. I urge you to read the overview by Sha Zukang, the Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs. He lists some of the successes so far, and these are heartening. In the section titled “Where accelerated progress is needed.” Sha Zukang lists seven initiatives. And it is in five of the seven that we can see how the work of Village Hopecore is working to further these goals:

1. Provide productive and decent employment for all

2. Continue the war against hunger

3. Get all children into school, especially those living in rural communities

4. Reduce maternal mortality

5. Bring improved sanitation

Yes, it is overwhelming to think of the size and scope of the goals altogether. One way to cut it down to size is to pick a geographic area and do all you can for it. Every group that we fund, has 12 members; each of those 12 members supports six people, on average. That’s 72 individuals that we can move from the poverty category. Right now we have 27 loan groups. That’s 1,944 people who have better food, a fighting chance to avoid malaria, put their children in school, and get water to their homes. We’re proud of that.  But we have 45 groups waiting for funding—3,240 people. We at Village Hopecore are fighting poverty one microloan at a time. Won’t you help us further the Millennium Goals?