This September, 2010 marks 10 years since the signing by 189 world leaders at the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000 to end poverty. The UN High-Level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly on the MDGs was held in New York recently. So have we made progress? There are many points of view on this.
The ‘Reality of Aid’ an independent review of poverty reduction and development assistance published their report and mentions that five years remain to realize the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). “Despite the many pledges on making aid work for development, donors have underperformed, and the current aid architecture continues to deliver aid in ways that impede its developmental impacts.” http://www.realityofaid.org/newsandfeatures/view/id/88/page/1
In Canada, the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation released a report by Patrick Johnston called, “Re-imagining Canada’s Foreign Aid”. The report mentions how Canada's $5 billion foreign aid program is in need of a fundamental overhaul to better address the current realities of developing countries. http://www.gordonfn.org/ForeignAidProject.cfm.cfm?cp=110
In British Columbia, Warren Feek from The Communication Initiative gave a presentation at the BCCIC annual general meeting on September 24th and described what he calls the ‘vertical MDGs’. He mentions how more than one billion people eat fewer than 1,900 calories per day and that Africa imports 25 percent of its food. See http://bccic.ca/sites/default/files/WarrenFeek.ppt
The journey continues…
