International Day for the Eradication of Poverty - 17 October

"We will have time to reach the Millennium Development Goals – worldwide and in most, or even all, individual countries – but only if we break with business as usual.

We cannot win overnight. Success will require sustained action across the entire decade between now and the deadline. It takes time to train the teachers, nurses and engineers; to build the roads, schools and hospitals; to grow the small and large businesses able to create the jobs and income needed. So we must start now. And we must more than double global development assistance over the next few years. Nothing less will help to achieve the Goals."

Kofi. A. Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations

Today - October 17th - is International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, as declared by the UN General Assembly.

The observance of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty can be traced back to October 17th, 1987. On that day, over a hundred thousand people gathered at the Trocadéro in Paris, where the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed in 1948, to honour the victims of extreme poverty, violence and hunger. They proclaimed that poverty is a violation of human rights and affirmed the need to come together to ensure that these rights are respected.

A tipping point in this movement seems to have occurred in September 2000, when during the Millennium Summitt world leaders from 191 nations agreed to an ambitious agenda for reducing poverty, promoting education, and improving lives. The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) resulted from this meeting, with each goal having its own time-bound and quantified targets to measure social, economic, and environmental progress. The deadline to achieve these goals is 2015.

Among the MDGs are two goals in particular which are at the heart of what this blog is about: education, opportunities for youth, and technology.

MDG goal number two addresses universal primary education. The measurable target is: to ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.

MDG goal number eight is focused on developing a global partnership for development. One of the targets for this goal is the creation of employment opportunities for youth. Another target is access to new technologies, especially information and communication technologies (ICT).

So ... here we are in 2007, the half-way point to the 2015 deadline. What have we accomplished so far?

According to the United Nations Development Program, global progress has been made but the gains are uneven and too slow in many parts of the world. In addition, there are huge disparities across and within countries. UN Statistics reports that,

• 100,000,000 children are out of school each year


• 2 out of 3 children who are out of school are Girls


• 1 out of 4 children in developing countries does not complete five years of basic education


• there are about 1,000,000,000 (yes, one billion) illiterate adults; this is 1/6 of the world's population

Last year I saw an excellent documentary at the World Affairs Council in San Francisco that exposed just how much of a challenge it still is for many children around the world to complete primary education, as a result of living in poverty.

The film "Back to School", produced by PBS Wide Angle in New York City, profiled seven children in seven countries - Afghanistan, Benin, Brazil, India, Japan, Kenya, and Romania - as they started their first year of school in 2003. Then, in 2006, the film crew returned to visit these children to see how they were doing.

The situations faced by these children are representative of the societies in which they live. By profiling these children, therefore, Wide Angle puts a human face on this issue and shows how much progress had been made so far and how much further we need to go to reach Millennium Development Goal number two.

In the film, we see that about half of the kids profiled are already struggling three years later to continue their education. Economic challenges are the primary obstacle to the children's ability to continue their studies.

According to UN Statistics, in all developing regions, the evidence is the same: children from the richest 20% of households are three times more likely to be in school than children from the poorest 20% of households. Similarly, children with educated mothers are more than twice as likely to be in school as children of mothers with no formal education. The lowest levels of attendance are found among indigenous peoples and other minority groups. Reaching these groups is the greatest challenge to achieving universal primary education.

Education is food for the mind; it is a basic human right. I believe MDG number two is a goal we can achieve but only, as Kofi Annan asserts, only if we break with business as usual, embrace a sustained effort, and take action right now.

With over 100 million children worldwide out of school, time on the clock is ticking to reach these kids and meet the MDGs by the 2015 deadline.

For ideas on how to contribute to help achieve this goal, please visit ONE.