In 2000, 189 nations signed up to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) by the year 2015. The goals encompassed:
- MDG 1: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
- MDG 3: promote gender equality and empower women
- MDG 4: reduce child mortality
- MDG 5: improve maternal health
- MDG 6: combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
- MDG 7: ensure environmental sustainability
- MDG 8: develop a global partnership for development
Progress was made, prompting Bill Gates to refer to the following slide as "the most beautiful chart in the world," because of the direction it was moving by lifting 137,000 people from extreme poverty (subsisting on less than $2.00 per day) each day over the past 25 years.
World population living in extreme poverty - Our World in Data - 2015
(Image by (From Wikimedia) Max Roser and Our World In Data team., Author: Max Roser and Our World In Data team.) Details Source DMCA
As pointed out by America Magazine, the Jesuit Review:
"The world could be on track to end abject poverty, defined as individuals subsisting on less than $2 a day. The wealthy and the powerful merely need to surrender a fraction more of the privilege most inherit by the good fortune of birth or geography; the world's advanced economies need only to continue an arguably meager commitment of just .7 percent (yes, less than 1 percent) of their gross national income to development assistance. (Though among the world's largest overall donors, the United States has struggled to give anything more than about .2 percent of its annual G.N.I. (Gross National Income) away in foreign assistance.)"
However, in May of 2017 President Trump proposed cutting 32% in spending on diplomacy and contributions to international organizations that do humanitarian relief in anti-poverty programs. In conflict and war-torn Africa, aid would be reduced in 2018 from $8 billion to $5.2 billion.
Catholic Relief Services, Bread for the World, Mercy Corps, the International Rescue Committee and Oxfam, organizations listed as part of People's Lobby's American World Service Corps National Service (AWSCNS) Congressional Proposal, objected to the proposed cuts. According to a statement released jointly by those organizations, "The deep and disproportionate cuts... will have life-and-death consequences today and will also undercut America's--and the world's--ability to address tomorrow's global threats."
If you have experienced how a billion people suffer living on less than $2.00 a day you may, for at least a few minutes, have an empathetic response to how the US and its citizens should respond.
What would you do if you were offered legislation that would involve a million Americans a year in the opportunity to address dire world and domestic needs empathetically and constructively through already proven service corps?
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