Blog Action Day: Poverty 2008

Today is Blog Action Day '08, a day when bloggers worldwide unite to raise awareness of a single theme. This year the theme is poverty. Eight years have passed since the UN Millennium Declaration was adopted when the international community mandated to: "spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of them are currently subjected."
The goals are, by 2015, to eradicate extreme poverty by halving the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day; to achieve full employment for all, including women and young people, and to cut in half the number of people who suffer from hunger. We are currently halfway through the timeframe and while some progress has been made there are still nearly one billion people do not have access to safe drinking water; ninety-three countries, with 62 percent of the world’s population, are not on track to reduce under-five mortality by two-thirds by 2015; and, perhaps most heartbreaking of all, eleven million children below age five, some 30,000 every day, die each year from preventable causes.*
This is unacceptable and you may be wondering what we can do to help. Here's a few ideas to get you started:
- Learn more about poverty at home and globally by visiting the Millennium Campaign: End Poverty 2015
- Support local charities that work to combat poverty and join campaigns for nationwide action groups like Habitat for Humanity
- Microfinance an entrepreneur in the developing world through Kiva
- Donate at The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
- Promote awareness of poverty by joining Blog Action Day 2008

*Statistics from United Nations Development Programme