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the millennium development goals
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goal 1 |
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eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
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Imagine you worked a full day to exhaustion, in unhealthy conditions, and still, only earned one dollar a day. How would you feed yourself well? What if you had a family to feed? How could you build and maintain a stable home? With the understanding that earning a living wage and having enough food to eat is everybody's right, Goal 1 has two specific targets:
• Reduce the proportion of people who earn less than $1 a day to half of the level recorded in 1990.
• Reduce the proportion of people who suffer from hunger to half of the level recorded in 1990.
Barely surviving, 1.2 billion people live in extreme poverty and 800 million people worldwide go hungry each day. Percentage wise, 28.3% of all people in low and middle income economies do not earn enough money to escape the poverty cycle. Target 1 seeks to reduce the percentage to 14.2% by 2015.
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only with
your voice
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how youth are affected and involved
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Out of the 1 billion people who live on less than $1 a day, approximately 238 million are young people. Sadly, it is young people who suffer the most from a life of poverty. The effects of poverty for youth are felt most in the areas of health, education, housing, safety, and access to employment opportunities. Therefore, the involvement of young people in action and awareness campaigns is critical. Who better to speak for youth than youth? Some youth groups are already taking action. National youth councils and youth organizations have structures in place to organize in collective fashion, some are actively engaged in poverty reduction strategies, youth-driven anti-corruption projects, and other projects that highlight the problems in rural areas and cities. Still, more youth should be consulted by decision-makers in poverty reduction processes so that they can assist fully in the development of their country.
What would you do? Visit our Action page for ideas that suit you!
For More On Goal 1 please visit:
Millennium Campaign Youth Site
Millennium Campaign
World Bank
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| what needs to be done |
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Mulei (Kenya)
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A lot! It would be misleading to present only this fact: that globally, the proportion of people living on $1 a day decreased from 30% in 1990 to 23% in 1999. The world has definitely made great strides to combat world poverty but progress is inconsistent, and for many countries, poverty levels are actually getting worse. Most of Asia and Northern Africa are on track, but there has been little or no progress in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. In Western Asia, poverty has actually increased.
Governments must improve their struggling economies, increase funding to education and health, increase agricultural productivity with new techniques, improve infrastructure (such as power and water supplies, transportation, roads and schools), and promote human rights and sustainable development.
There are also numerous low-cost strategies to fight poverty and hunger such as nutrition education and vitamin/nutrient supplements to combat malnutrition.
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