The Millennium Development Goals

Around the world countless youth groups and youth initiatives try to support the development of the MDGs with their local youth led development action projects and in this way make an important contribution that those goals can be achieved by the year 2015.

The United Nations emphasize the importance of the role young people around the world are able to play in this vital global process of making this planet a more peaceful and sustainable world for the generations to come.

In the Youth Development Starter Kit, “Northing for us…without us”, that was created during the 3rd World Youth Congress in Scotland, August 2005 Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations called upon the young people of the world to become active :

• 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
• Develop a global partnership for development

"At the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, the Youth Caucus called on us to "see young people as a resource, not a problem." How right they were. Young people are the most precious resource our planet possesses. That is why I have worked to create initiatives such as the Youth Employment Network, set up to fight the tragic waste of youth joblessness. Young leaders of today are vital partners in that effort, and in so many others: eradicating the HIV/AIDS pandemic and other deadly deseases; achieving gender equality and universal primary education for all; and, most importantly, eradicating extreme poverty - the first of the Millennium Development Goals.

In Africa, where I come from, half the children go to bed hungry every night. Many of them lack a bed, some even a roof over their heads. It is hard to imagine, if you have never experienced it, what it is like to be sick and have no doctor to go to, to be hungry and have no food to eat, to want a future but no school to prepare you for it. With the Millennium Development Goals, the world's governments have committed themselves to halving the number of people living in extreme poverty by 2015.

It should be the commitment of your generation to eradicate it completely. It is never too early to be active. If you start young, I am confident that, by the time you are my age, you will succeed. So I hope you will make the best possible use of this toolkit. Your generation can Make Poverty History."

Kofi Annan, Secretary - General of the United Nations

Foreword from the Youth Development Starter Kit - "Nothing for us, without us", 3rd World Youth Congress, Stirling/Scotland, August 2005

It is one of the main goals of the Global Village Project 2006 to support the role of young people in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. The Global Village Project Website together with the Global Village Project Mission Control Centre which provides the necessary internet tools help the young people to make their valuable and important projects seen and their voices heard on a local as well as on an international level.

Important MDGs Links:
www.developmentgoals.org
www.makepovertyhistory.org
www.milleniumcampaign.org
www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
www.undp.org/mdg/
www.unmillenniumproject.org
www.un-ngls.org/mdg
www.whiteband.org