Global Poverty and Solutions- Millennium Development Goals

8/9/09
Today I learned about the Millennium Development Goals, a set of eight goals established in order to improve conditions in developing countries. These include:

1. Decreasing poverty and hunger
2. Universal primary education
3. Gender equality/empowerment
4. Decreasing child mortality
5. Improving maternal health
6. Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and others
7. Environmental sustainability
8. Global partnership

We also discussed the possibility of a water crisis. There seems to be an increasing scarcity of fresh water in many parts of the world, and this is made worse by various factors, such as the production of many types of food and biofuels, which require a lot of water to make. Many plants that developing countries export require large amounts of water to grow, meaning that they are virtually exporting the water that they need.
Today's class has further increased my awareness of my responsibilities as a person and our responsibilities as a country, informing me of how the world hopes to approach global development and what people can do to help achieve these goals.