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Every day more than 60,000 people worldwide die needlessly because food and basic health care is not available to them. Of those, 30,000 are children. That’s one child dying needlessly every three seconds. Four children have died preventable deaths in the time it took you to read this paragraph.
Our humanity tells us it shouldn’t be this way. An amazing coalition of development economists, world leaders, teachers, businesspeople and many, many others, tell us it doesn’t have to be this way. The Gospel tells us that we are the ones who need to make sure it isn’t this way any longer.
In September, 2000, all the nations of the world pledged support to the Millennium Development Goals, a mutually agreed upon structure for them to join together and practically address the eight biggest threats to human security in the world today.
The Episcopal Church USA and the Diocese of Texas, along with the Roman Catholic Church and all mainline Protestant denominations, has joined with the Church of England and committed to support the Millennium Development Goals and the “0.7% solution.”
The Millennium Development Goals are:
- Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
- Achieve universal primary education
- Promote gender equality and empower women
- Reduce child mortality
- Improve maternal health
- Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
- Ensure environmental stability, and
- Promote a global partnership for development
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