Pioneering Strategies to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals

In September 2000, the leaders of 189 nations committed to achieve specific results by 2015 in eight major areas that have come to be known as the “Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).” Here are the key targets for 2015 and highlights of the numerous cutting-edge, large-scale strategies pioneered by The Hunger Project to empower people to achieve the MDGs.

	Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. To reduce by half the proportion of people living under $1 per day. At our epicenters across Africa, thousands of women food farmers are increasing their incomes through training, credit, and strengthening their clout in the marketplace.   To reduce by half the proportion of children who are malnourished. In six of the poorest states of Mexico, we have mobilized people to grow vegetables, build greenhouses and introduce other farm innovations resulting in better nutrition.
	Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education. Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. Across Bangladesh, Hunger Project animators carry out mass mobilizations to ensure 100% school registration of girls, and campaigns to reduce drop-out rates.
	Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women. Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015.   The Hunger Project goes beyond this target by empowering women as the key change agents for the end of hunger.  In Peru last year, we brought together indigenous women leaders from across Latin America to create a shared platform of action, including the commitment to train young women as the leaders of tomorrow.
	Goal 4: Reduce child mortality. Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate. By establishing health centers and pre-school nutrition programs at our African epicenters, more than 1000 villages have dramatically reduced  child mortality.
	Goal 5: Improve maternal health. Reduce by three-quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio.  More than 25,000 women elected representatives trained by The Hunger Project in India work to improve the primary health centers and ensure that all women receive pre- and post-natal care.
	Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases. Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, and the incidence of malaria and other diseases, by 2015.   Across Africa, more than 280,000 villagers have taken the HIV/AIDS and Gender Inequality workshops. THP-Malawi has carried out successful campaigns to have villagers use bed nets to prevent Malaria.
	Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability. Cut by half the proportion of people without safe drinking water in rural areas and the proportion of people without sanitation in rural areas. In Bangladesh, The Hunger Project created a national coalition to stop industrial pollution of the air and water supply.
	Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for Development. Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, nondiscriminatory trading and financial system. Deal comprehensively with the debt problem. While these are actions which must be taken by governments, Hunger Project investors are a microcosm of the spirit which will be required. Hunger Project investors do not see themselves as “donors” but as co-equal partners with hungry people to create a better future for all humanity.