Reflections of Havergal: 1994-2019

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The UN’s Millennium Development Goals BTI , November 2007 By Rebecca Best. Grade 11

As Havergal embarks upon a new academic year, we are greeted with a new theme presented by Havergal’s institute. That’s right, no longer the year of the story, but the year of the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals. And with this theme, comes a whole new set of questions. Sure you’ve seen the poster around the school, but have you really grasped the ideas involved with the Millennium Development Goals? The Millennium Development Goals consist of 8 different global objectives, covering many different issues that affect a huge proportion of the world population, with a proposed completion date of the year 2015. The first objective involves the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger by reducing the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day by half, and by reducing the proportion of people who suffer from hunger by half as well. The second goal consists of the achievement of global primary education by ensuring that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling. The next four goals include the promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women, reduction of the child mortality rate by two thirds among children under five, reduction of the maternal mortality rate by 75%, and combatting HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. In addition, these objectives are working to ensure environmental sustainability by integrating the principles of sustainable development, reversing the loss of environmental resources, by reducing the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water by 50%, and by achieving a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020. Lastly, by developing a global partnership for development, the UN hopes to develop an open trading and financial system, address the special needs of the least developed countries, create productive work for youth globally,

and cooperate with the private sector to make the benefits of new technology available to the world. As Kofi Annan, the United Nations SecretaryGeneral at the time of the development of these goals, articulately said, “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.” The Institute has provided the Havergal student body with the opportunity to do their part in achieving these goals. So why hesitate? Break business as usual, sustain your actions, take the time, and start now.

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