A GRASSROOTS anti-poverty group hopes Australia supports a bold plan to consign poverty to the history books forever this week.
The Melbourne chapter of RESULTS International (Australia) will be taking part in a nation-wide media blitz to inform Australians of the powerful impact the new Global Goals could have on ending poverty once and for all.
They’ll be writing heartfelt letters-to-the-editor, passionate opinion articles and even penning informative letters to their local parliamentarians in an effort to get the new Turnbull Government to endorse, adopt and adequately resource the new 17 world-changing goals that will be agreed upon when hundreds of the world’s leaders meet at the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Summit in New York City on September 25-27.
Group leader Albert Benjamin believes that humanity is at a pivotal moment in history where poverty can be eliminated within our lifetime. “In 1990, a promise was made to the world’s children: to end poverty once and for all. This was made at a time when 35,000 children were dying each day from hunger and poverty-related diseases,” Albert said.
“Since 2000, the number of people living in poverty has halved and the number of children dying daily from poverty has dropped to 16,000,” Alert added.
Since the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were adopted by world leaders 15 years ago, child mortality has halved; dropping from 880 to 43 deaths per 1000 live births. Access to clean, piped drinking water has increased from 2.3 billion people in 1990 to 4.2 billion people today.
“By focusing their efforts on achieving the MDGs, the world’s developing communities have achieved unbelievable feats in the effort to end poverty. 15 years ago over 100 million children weren’t receiving a proper education. That figure has now almost halved to 57 million.
“The job is far from done. I hope that by committing to the new goals, the global community will finish off what the MDGs started; building a better world for all of us,” Albert added.
Albert is confident that Australia will endorse and adopt the Global Goals at the United Nations this week but he’d worried that the Turnbull Government won’t in fact put their money where their mouth is and invest properly in achieving the goals.
“Australian aid and other efforts have certainly played a part in achieving the progress we’ve seen since 2000. But $11.3 billion has been cut from the Australian aid program since 2013. That’s alarming considering there are still over 800 million people going to bed hungry each night and 1.5 million people dying from tuberculosis each year,” Albert said.
“We’re so close to freeing humanity from the tyranny of poverty,” Albert added. “It would be heartbreaking if we fell over just before the finish line.”
To find out more about the new Global Goals visit: www.results.org.au.
Ryan Fritz
Ryan Fritz started The Advocate in 2014 to provide not-for-profits and charities another media platform to tell their worthwhile hard news stories and opinion pieces effortlessly. In 2020, Ryan formed a team of volunteer journalists to help spread even more high-quality stories from the third sector. He also has over 10 years experience as a media and communications professional for not-for-profits and charities and currently works at Redkite, a childhood cancer charity.
