The Power Bloggers and the Fundraising Fiesta

In 2000, the UN held a Millennium Summit. From this meeting, eight Millennium Development Goals were formed with the goal of eradicating extreme poverty and many of the problems associated with it; lack of education, gender inequality, and lack of sustainable development by the year 2015. The eight goals are as follows:

So I was looking more into this when I stumbled upon a site called Millennium Promise and I completely geeked out. Basically, Millennium Promise works by building millennium villages, and working from the ground up. By focusing on a small area, they are able to attack all the problems at once to reach the eight goals.

When you work towards one goal, such as achieving primary education for everyone, you have to address other problems as well at the same time. If the family isn’t able to make enough food with the kids attending school, they’ll have to stay home, and if there’s a lack of gender equality, many girls won’t be allowed to attend school. But if you attack all the problems at once, it’s the fastest way to escape the poverty trap.

This local approach has worked really well in micro financing, whereby giving small loans to individuals, they can pursue ventures that they could not have otherwise. This not only helps them to support themselves, but it helps the community develop in turn. This tactic is based on the idea that by attracting small pockets of larger income, this money in turn will stimulate the local economy, which will stimulate a bigger economy and so forth. So, the millennium villages are kind of like the Grameen Bank on steroids (see, we did learn something in HUG).

I decided that I wanted to donate something, but I realized that I don’t have enough money on my own to make as great a contribution as I’d like to. That’s when I thought of having a fundraiser, but I didn’t know who’d want to help. And then it hit me. I’m part of a SuperBlogging Team am I not? Surely my fellow Power Bloggers will help me ( and obviously, anyone not an actual member of the Power Bloggers can help out too, we’ll need all the help we can get).

So think of it as our first mission, are you up to the challenge?

-Viv

P.S. You can visit the UN site for the Development Goals here: http://www.undp.org/mdg/

And the site for Millennium Promise here (or just click on the title) : http://www.millenniumpromise.org/