Engaging Congregations in Achieving the Millennium Development Goals Jon Singletary Baylor Center for Family & Community Ministries Seeds of Hope, Council of Stewards

What are MDGs? At the Millennium Summit in 2000, the leaders of almost 200 countries adopted the UN Millennium Declaration, making a commitment to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and setting out a series of targets, with a deadline of 2015, that have become known as the Millennium Development Goals. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the world's targets for addressing extreme poverty in its many dimensions - income, hunger, disease, shelter, and exclusion - while promoting gender equality, education, and environmental sustainability. They also promote basic human rights - the rights of each person on the planet to health, education, shelter, and security.

However, these are not merely secular goals. Jesus calls us to care for the poor and promote justice for the oppressed. From his command to love our neighbor to his reminder that he came so that we might have life, we hear calls to faithful action as his disciples. The Millennium Development Goals offer us a response to Jesus call to care. They reflect God’s passionate desire for service and love, for justice and mercy. Because charity is not enough, we see in these goals an opportunity to embody God’s justice in a suffering world.

Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women Goal 4: Reduce Child Mortality Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development

Global Economic Principles for Reducing Extreme Poverty Reducing Debt Improving Trade Increasing Effective Aid Each of these factors has an impact on how we address the MDGs…

Consider the situation in Zambia… For many years, copper in Zambia was used to create wealth. When copper prices fell in the 1970’s, the country found itself borrowing money and building up international debts. By the 1990’s, debt repayment programs prevented Zambia from investing in education, health care and other resources to help strengthen its own economy, such as roads. Trading copper-based products remains a challenge because of tariffs charged by wealthy nations on the import of manufactured copper products; trade is not free or fair. Cotton, another Zambian export, isn’t traded successfully because U.S. & European agribusiness subsidies keep cotton prices artificially low.

Today, Zambia has received some debt reduction assistance, allowing it to develop some infrastructure. However, the nation must still spend twice as much on repaying debt as it spends on education and health care combined. Effective aid from the U.S., in the form of poverty-focussed development assistance, has provided borehole wells, anti- malarial medications, and mosquito nets. Here we see examples of how the impact of debt, trade, and aid can make a difference. In a sub-saharan country, like Zambia, the MDG’s are being promoted to offer: sustainable development, debt reduction, aid to strengthen health care for malaria and HIV/AIDS treatment, education to empower women, locally grown and traded foods & safe water, and an overall reduction in poverty.

Websites for more info… E4GR - Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation ( CBF - Cooperative Baptist Fellowship ( Micah Challenge ( The ONE Campaign ( Bread for the World (

Christian Education Resources God’s Mission in the World: An Ecumenical Christian Study Guide on Global Poverty and the Millennium Development Goals ( Eradicating Global Poverty: A Christian Study Guide on the MDGs (Friendship Press)