Welcome to the Millennium Development Goals on line taster course!  This is an

opportunity for you to learn in your own time, at your own pace, and in the comfort

of your own home. 

This taster looks at the following questions:

• What are the Millennium Development Goals? (MDGs)
• Why do we need them?
• How effective are the MDGs in fighting inequality across the world?

This taster involves you in reading some short texts, watching a couple of You Tube videos and thinking about some questions on the topic.  There is a list of useful websites and links to other related taster courses. 

We hope you enjoy the course!


Don't forget when you get to the bottom of the page, click on the 'Older Posts' link to get to the next section.

Activity 1: Millennium Development Goals-   What are they? 

This short text gives a brief overview of what the MDGs are, and why we need them.

Millennium Development Goals

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight goals that the United Nation countries (which include the UK) have agreed to try and achieve in the developing world by the year 2015. These goals are:

Goal 1: Reduce poverty

Goal 2: Educate every child

Goal 3: Provide equal chances for girls and women

Goal 4: Reduce the number of babies & children who die

Goal 5: Ensure safe and healthy motherhood

Goal 6: Fight infectious diseases

Goal 7: Clean up the environment

Goal 8: Share responsibility for making the world a better place.

Why do we need them?

·        A child dies every 3 seconds because of poverty

·        Healthcare  to make childbirth safer would cost about $12 billion a year which is the same amount of money that people in the UK and the US spend on perfume

·        Worldwide more than 10 million children die each year before they reach the age of five, almost all of them in developing countries. In fact, 90% of under-five deaths occur in just 42 countries.

·        Half the world – nearly 3 billion people – live  on less than 2 dollars a day (approx £1.20 )

·        There are 103 million children not in school. Most of these are in developing countries and 57% of them are girls.

·        More than half a million women die during pregnancy or childbirth each year. In Ethiopia 1 in 14 women die of complications or illnesses during pregnancy and childbirth. In the UK only 1 in 6000 women die for this reason

·        In 2003 about 8,000 people died each day from AIDs. About 1 million people die from malaria each year, and about 2 million people die from tuberculosis (TB).

·        The amount of money needed to pay for all children to get basic schooling is about $10 billion a year – less than the money that the population of the US spends on ice cream!

·        Two thirds of the 876 million people who can’t read and write are women.

Did you know about the MDGs before reading this?  What is your reaction to this text? Was there anything in particular which surprise or shocked you?

Activity 2:    Infant Mortality Rates           

One way of measuring how rich a country is to measure  its infant mortality rates and compare it with others.  The Infant Morality rate is always measured per 1,000 live births.  So, for example, an Infant mortality rate of 2.5 means that for every 1,000 live births, 2.5 babies (on average) will not survive to be a year old. An infant Mortality rate of 8, means that for every 1,000 live births, 8 babies will not survive their first birthday.   The lower the number the better in terms of the number of babies who survive.

Look at the countries listed below.  Spend a couple of minutes thinking about which countries you think would have the highest and lowest Infant mortality rates and put them in order.

United Kingdom             Germany                 Angola                   Gaza (Palestine)

Sweden                           Spain                     Singapore              Cuba         

Australia                         United States         South Africa          Rwanda

Answer:   Here are the figures.

1.       Singapore                                  2.28  deaths/1,000 births

2.       Sweden                                     2.77  deaths/1,000 births

3.       Germany                                   4.20    deaths/1,000 births

4.       Spain                                        4.48    deaths/1,000 births

5.       Australia                                    4.76    deaths/1,000 births

6.       United Kingdom                         5.22    deaths/1,000 births

7.       Cuba                                         6.45    deaths/1,000 births

8.       United States                             6.63    deaths/1,000 births

9.       Gaza Strip (Palestine)                 18.35  deaths/1000 births

10.     South Africa                               44.42  deaths/1000 births

11.     Rwanda                                     86.61  deaths/1000 births

12.    Angola                                        180.21 deaths/1000 births

How did you get on? Did you get most of them in the right order? Did any of the figures  surprise you?  Can you think of any reasons why a particular country might have high or low infant mortality rates?

Answer:    As you might expect, the lowest rates of infant mortality are in richer, northern industrialised countries, such as Sweden, Australia, Spain and Germany, while the highest infant mortality rates are in the very poorest countries in Africa.  

However, you may have been surprised by some of the figures. For example, the UK is only in 6^th place, below Spain and Singapore. Also, Cuba, although a poor country has a lower infant mortality rates than the United States, the richest country on the planet. The most shocking statistics are for Angola  where a staggering 180.2 babies out of a 1000 die before the age of 1 – over 30 times the numbers of babies dying in the UK.

In the UK we are used to good ante and post natal care,  we have enough to eat and we have access to clean drinking water. People in the poorest countries do not, which is why so many babies die young. The United States is a country of contrasts: while there are extremely wealthy people, there is also desperate poverty. With no NHS the very poorest people have almost as little access to health care as those living in Africa.  Cuba, in contrast, has always given priority to its health services with the result that its infant mortality rates are similar to the UK’s, despite it being a very poor country.

Activity 3:   Some encouraging signs!   Read the short text below which gives examples of how the MDGs are helping to improve people’s lives.  

Bed Nets in Ghana

In Ghana some 80,000 children under the age of five die each year, most of them from diseases that can be prevented or treated. Malaria is the biggest single cause of childhood deaths, causing about a quarter of all deaths among children under five.   Sleeping under a bed net can cut child deaths by as much as 20 per cent.

In November 2006 a campaign was started in Ghana to give out free bed nets to all families with children under the age of two. The government  of Ghana was able to do this with the help of £6 million grant from the UK government.  At the same time the children were given injections against measles and polio.

Edith & Pronia’s Story

Edith lives in Malawi. She is poor, HIV positive and cannot afford to pay for expensive medicines. For years Edith suffered ill health. She first became sick after she had a baby who died five months later. She had five further miscarriages, then found out she had TB.   Her husband died from AIDs, so Pronia, Edith’ s 11 year old daughter, had to take care of her.  A new project funded by the United Nations means that Edith, like thousands of others in Malawi, now gets the treatment she needs.

Edith says, “ When I first found out I was HIV positive I was really shocked and scared, but now I am finally  getting the right treatment. I look and feel healthy, I can work again, and my future is more secure. “

Pronia says ” I’m glad my mother’s health is better because now I can go back to school. When she was sick I had to look for food, cook and do all the household chores.”

Sources: Make Poverty History, Oxfam, UNESCO, Christian Aid, DFID, Understanding the world through English

a)     How have projects funded through the MDGs helped people in Africa?

b)   Any thoughts or comments on this text?

Activity 4:  You Tube   Watch the You Tube clip on the Millennium Development Goals

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vddX4n30sXY

What is your reaction to the clip?  What impression does it give of the work that the United Nations is doing?

Activity 5:   Look at this graph of the progress of the Progress on MDGs

Goal 1:  Halve the number of people living on less than $1 a day by 2015.

This is quite a complicated bar chart. The graph is concerned with 2 years – 1990 and 2004.

The dark blue columns show figures for 1990 & the lighter blue column shows figures for 2004. 

The yellow columns show us the figures for all developing countries added  together.  

The CIS countries ( Commonwealth of Independent States) include Russia and countries such as Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia and others that used to belong the former Soviet Union.

1) What is the title of the chart?

2) What do the X (vertical) and Y (horizontal) axes show?

3)  How much is one dollar a day in pence per day? To convert one dollar ($) into pounds

        (£), do the following on your calculator:   1  ¸  1.5 (the approximate exchange rate).

4) For sub –Saharan Africa what was the percentage of people living below one dollar a day in 1990 and then in 2004?

5) What does the red line mean?

6) Give an example of ONE region of the world which has not yet met the 2015 target to reduce poverty.  

7) Give ONE example of a region in the world which has met its target to reduce poverty.

8) The yellow bars represent all developing regions. What do the yellow bars tell us?

Answer:  

• The title of the graph is the Proportion of People living on less than a Dollar a Day, in 1990 and in 2004. 
• The y axis shows the percentage of people and the x axis shows the different groups of countries. 
• A dollar is approximately  66p.
• In sub Saharan Africa about 47% of people lived on less than a dollar a day in 1990. In 2004 that figure had dropped  a little too about  41%.   
• The red line shows the target to reach by 2015 set by the MDGs. 
•  Countries in sub Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America have not their targets, while countries in South East Asia and North Africa have met their targets already. If you look at the yellow bars which represent all of the developing countries put together it shows that overall developing countries haven’t reached their target yet but arguably are not far off.

Activity 6:   The Girl who silenced the World

Watch the You Tube clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qf0MC1UtvM

Then discuss these questions:

1.            Did you like the clip? Why? Why not?

2.            What left the biggest impression on you?

 

Answer:   Everyone will have their own views, of course, but, personally, I liked the clip. I thought it was inspiring to see a young person deliver a powerful speech to the United Nations.  The fact that the girl was only 13 and yet had so much information and strong views about what was wrong with the world made  a big impression on me, as did the confident manner in which she delivered her speech. 

I think she was trying to shame all the delegates at the meeting into action. She accused the delegates of hypocrisy: of claiming to care, but doing nothing. She stated that even as a child she could see that less greed and more equal distribution of wealth and resources would ensure the end of desperate poverty across the world, but politicians, big business were too worried about losing votes or losing money on the stock market to do anything to change the situation.

Activity 7:    Read this short piece from the United Nations Development Programme, which looks at the amount of money each UN country gives in aid to poor countries.

The cost of stopping preventable deaths from hunger, malnutrition, childbirth, malaria, TB and AIDs is about $195 billion a year, according to the United Nations. Twenty-two developed countries below have pledged to work towards each giving 0.7% (a little less than 1%) of their national income in international aid, which would raise the $195 billion needed.

2009 International Aid Donated (Official Development Assistance)
COUNTRY	For each $100 earned in the country, how much is donated in aid	Aid as % of income	How close the country is to reaching the 0.7% goal
Sweden	112 cents	1.12	Already reached goal
Norway	106 cents	1.06	Already reached goal
Luxembourg	101 cents	1.01	Already reached goal
Denmark	88 cents	0.88	Already reached goal
Netherlands	82 cents	0.82	Already reached goal
Belgium	55 cents	0.55	Scheduled to reach in 2010
Finland	54 cents	0.54	Scheduled to reach in 2015
Ireland	54 cents	0.54	Scheduled to reach in 2012
United Kingdom	52 cents	0.52	Scheduled to reach in 2013
Switzerland	47 cents	0.47	No schedule yet
France	46 cents	0.46	Scheduled to reach in 2012
Spain	46 cents	0.46	Scheduled to reach in 2012
Germany	35 cents	0.35	Scheduled to reach in 2014
Canada	30 cents	0.30	No schedule yet
Austria	30 cents	0.30	Scheduled to reach in 2015
Australia	29 cents	0.29	No schedule yet
New Zealand	29 cents	0.29	No schedule yet
Portugal	23 cents	0.23	Scheduled to reach in 2015
United States	20 cents	0.20	No schedule yet
Greece	19 cents	0.19	Scheduled to reach in 2015
Japan	18 cents	0.18	No schedule yet
Italy	16 cents	0.16	Scheduled to reach in 2015

Source: OECD. The figures for 2010 are due out in April 2011.

Why the 0.7% Agreement?

The 0.7% figure may sound complicated, but it is actually quite simple. You take the total income earned by all the people in the country and then the government gives 0.7% (seven tenths of one percent) of that as aid. Or to look at it another way: for every $100 earned in the country, the country gives 70 cents in aid.  If all 22 developed countries give 0.7%, the UN can raise the $195 billion needed to stop preventable deaths in poor countries.

How are the countries doing?

As the chart above shows, five countries have already met the goal to give 0.7% of their income in international aid: Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden.
In 2002 and 2003, five other countries set up a schedule to give 0.7%: Belgium, Ireland, Finland, France, and Spain.
In July 2004, the United Kingdom set up a schedule to give 0.7%.
In April 2005, Germany set up a schedule to give 0.7%.
In May 2005, Austria, Greece, Italy, and Portugal set up a schedule to give 0.7%.

The remaining six countries

Only six countries have not yet set up a schedule to give 0.7%. These are Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the United States. To raise the $195 billion a year, these six will need to reach the goal.  These six countries are all democracies. All that is necessary for them to reach the 0.7% goal is for enough of their citizens to show their support.

Source: UN Millennium Project, United Nations Development Program (UNDP),

a)    How much would it cost per year to stop preventable deaths in poor countries? 

b)    How much do each of the 22 developed countries need to give to reach that figure?

c)     How many countries have pledged to give 0.7%, and how many are actually doing so?

d)    Which countries have still not signed up?

e)    What do you think about what you have just read?