The outreach program attracted close to 50 youth from the Serua/Namosi province.
The program, which has been targeted at scaling up citizen monitoring of the Millennium Development Goals at the local level, has been described as a success by participants.
Children Stand Up for MDGs
As dawn broke over Kok, Papua New Guinea last Friday, 300 children and their teachers and friends gathered at Ela Beach in Port Moresby to welcome the new day by showing their support for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Their motivation for getting up at 4:30am, and even camping out at their school for the Dawn Service, was to remember the eight goals that world leaders from Papua New Guinea and 188 other member states of the United Nations committed to in 2000 and agreed to achieve by 2010. The goals are aimed at improving the lives of the world’s poorest.
On Saturday September 18, a fantastic group of Melbourne Make Poverty History volunteers met in the city to hold a Stand Up Flash mob in the middle of the central business district. Armed with musical instruments, whistles and pots to bang, the volunteers spread themselves out through the Bourke Street mall, chatting, window shopping and melting into the general shopping crowd.
As the clocked ticked to 1:00 pm, the "flashmobbers" scattered amongst the Saturday shoppers began to blow whistles and make noise for the Millennium Development Goals.
Every minute a woman dies due to complications in pregnancy or
childbirth, adding up to half a million women dying every year. Another
10-15 million women suffer serious or long-lasting illnesses or
disabilities.
“No woman should die giving life,” said UNFPA Executive Director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid.
“To have a healthy society, you have to have healthy mothers.”
In many countries, however, progress in maternal health has been slow.
In some, the situation has actually deteriorated over the last 20 years.
Small island States today called on industrialized countries to take a leadership role at the Bali Climate Change Conference and adopt targets to keep the world from warming past the point where catastrophic impacts would occur.
“No island should be left behind,” said Angus Friday of Grenada, the Chairman of the Alliance of Small Island States. These vulnerable countries, he said, are already feeling the impact of climate change in the form of more hurricanes, cyclone and typhoons.
New Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, affirmed the importance of the Millennium Development Goals in his first press conference since the Federal election.
When describing his post-election conversations with world leaders, Mr Rudd declared that climate change and the challenge of achieving the Millennium Development Goals were two key areas he wished to work on.
