Social workers who believe strongly that social development and social justice are part of their profession’s mandate are naturally drawn to projects that have the potential to alleviate poverty wherever it exists. The wider community these days is slowly adopting the social work basic premise that has guided social work practitioners for decades. That is, change can only be effectively accomplished when people are fully engaged in their own rehabilitation.
This principle has been applied in many local projects when social workers work in the community development and social justice areas of their profession. Social workers who work with their individual clientele on a one-on-one basis apply this principle as well in their practice. Often, we lament that, in many cases, it is the “system” that is interfering with people inhibiting them from attaining their full potential. So the principle of engaging people in the work of solving their own problems with some guidance from outside themselves has been time tested.
Millennium Development Goals - Taking this principle to a higher level is the approach of the Millennium Project which was commissioned by the United Nations Secretary-General in 2002 to develop practicable, concrete, measurable targets for countries to raise their people out of poverty. The Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s) were approved by the United Nations to reverse the grinding poverty, hunger and disease affecting billions of people in the poorest nations of the world.
The eight goals which contain specific targets are listed below:
· Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
· Achieve universal primary education
· Promote gender equality and empower women
· Reduce child mortality
· Improve maternal health
· Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
· Ensure environmental sustainability
· Develop a global partnership for development (i.e., good governance, availability of new technologies, drugs, debt reduction, productive work for youth, etc.)
In 2005, the independent advisory body headed by Professor Jeffrey Sachs, special advisor to the UN Secretary-General and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, presented its final recommendations to the Secretary-General in a report, Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
Millennium Villages Project (MVP) - The outcome of the advisory body’s recommendations was the Millennium Villages project and is based on a single powerful idea: impoverished villages can transform themselves and meet the Millennium Development Goals if they are empowered with proven, powerful, practical technologies. By investing in health, food production, education, access to clean water, and essential infrastructure, these community-led interventions will enable impoverished villages to escape extreme poverty, something that currently confines over 1 billion people worldwide.
The Millennium Village Project, a large, experimental intervention which aims to spark local economic development in fourteen village clusters across Africa and show that “people in the poorest regions of rural Africa can lift themselves out of extreme poverty in five years’ time”
The Millennium Village Project, a model for fighting poverty at the village level, is trying to show how a few simple reforms, seven in all, can substantially improve lives and provide livelihoods. These are: fertiliser and seed to improve food yield; anti-malarial bed nets; improved water sources; diversification from staple into cash crops; a school feeding programme; deworming for all; and the introduction of new technologies, such as energy-saving stoves and mobile phones.
Millennium Village Projects must be financed from outside until they become self-sustaining. To finance the Millennium Village Projects, developed countries aspiring to permanent seats on the UN Security Council, are encouraged to fulfill their commitment to provide 0.7 percent of their GNP to the Official Development Assistance (ODA) by 2015 as part of their leadership responsibilities (the 0.7% target was first affirmed by UN member states in a 1970 General Assembly and reaffirmed by select country groups in 2002, 2005 and 2010). In many low-income countries, and practically all least developed countries, domestic resources alone are not enough to meet the Goals. The process of funding and implementing a Millennium Village is a shared effort between the Official Development Assistance from rich countries, the receiving country, private sector donations and the villages themselves as well as in-kind contributions.
The MVP is an experiment to demonstrate that the Millennium Goals can be achieved by the target year 2015. The experiment may need to continue past 2015 for some villages but eventually will decrease until the village ends its dependency on outside aid and becomes self-sustaining. The data collected so far indicate significant progress is being made and villages are achieving sustainability. This project differs in several ways from other development programs that have been offered: (a) Progress is tied to the millennium goals and are measurable; (b) It focuses on participatory community decision-making; (c) The initiative uses improved science-based technologies and techniques that have only recently become available; and (d) initiative is linked to national–level processes to ensure that the success can be continued and enhanced by country governments.
Although there has been some criticism (Moyo, 2009) of giving financial aid to African countries as creating dependence and leading to nowhere, the attempt by the Millennium Village project is to tie financial aid to defined measurable goals which, when reached, lead to independence and sustainability.
In 2004, SauriSauri has dropped by at least 50% since the distribution of free bed nets. Food yield has more than doubled and villagers say that everyone can now find at least a little to eat. A school feeding programme, whereby farmers give a portion of their harvest to the village schools, has had a dramatic effect. Children stay in school longer and, with a bowl of maize and beans in their belly, are able to concentrate. Since school feeding began, Sauri has risen from 108th to 2nd in district exam results, out of 253 schools.
Almost two years into its five-year boost, there are signs of economic activity in Sauri as well. Several shops have opened. A few people have purchased mobile phones, one or two have managed to invest in dairy cows, and many more are diversifying into cash crops”. (The Economist, 2006)
In addition to applying the Millennium Goals to the millennium villages in the poorest nations of the world, a broader application of the Millennium Goals can be applied to the elimination of poverty wherever poverty exists. Best practises in seven investment and policy areas are necessary to achieve the MDG’s:( http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/index.htm)
· Rural development: increasing food output and incomes – Requires soil improvement and resulting incomes of small holder farmers and their families. Need – fertilizers, increase rural access to transport, information and communications, safe drinking water, sanitation, modern energy, and reliable water for agriculture and agriculture-related small and medium-size enterprises, all done in an environmentally sustainable manner.
· Urban development: promoting jobs, upgrading slums, and developing alternatives to new slum formation - A central focus should be to strengthen the operational capacity of local governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), women's organizations, and other civil society groups, and to include them in the formulation of relevant national policies.
· Health systems: ensuring universal access to essential services - Practical investments and policies for a functioning health system include training and retaining competent, motivated health workers, strengthening management systems, providing adequate supplies of essential drugs, and building clinics and laboratory facilities. Eliminating user fees for essential health services, -improving -community health education, promoting behavior change, and involving communities in decision-making and service delivery are also critical measures.
· Education: ensuring universal primary, expanded post primary, and expanded higher education - Governments should ensure that every child, boy or girl, completes basic schooling of good quality, that a substantial proportion also completes post primary education, and that a significant number are enrolled in tertiary education by 2015.
· Gender equality: investing to overcome pervasive gender bias - They should also address systemic challenges such as protection of sexual and reproductive health and rights (including access to information and family planning services), equal access to economic assets such as land and housing, increased primary school completion and expanded access to post primary education for girls, equal labor market opportunities, freedom from violence, and increased representation at all levels of governance.
· Environment: investing in improved resource management - Examples of direct investments in environmental management are replanting forests, treating wastewater, curbing chemical pollution, and conserving critical ecosystems. Well-designed sector strategies, including agriculture and infrastructure services, can use strategic impact assessments to minimize negative environmental trade-offs. The removal of environmentally damaging subsidies can further improve environmental management.
· Science, technology, and innovation: building national capacities - Sustainable MDG-based strategies require the buildup of indigenous institutions and skills to advance science, technology, and innovation. Practical measures to increase a country's scientific capacity include creating science advisory bodies to the national government, expanding science and engineering faculties in universities and polytechnics, strengthening development and entrepreneurial focus in science and technology curricula, promoting business opportunities in science and technology, and promoting infrastructure development as a technology learning process.
· Interdependence of investment clusters - Each investment cluster depends on the others and most interventions have effects on several Goals. For example, reducing gender inequality is essential for reducing hunger, containing HIV/AIDS, promoting environmental sustainability, upgrading slums, and reducing child and infant mortality. Reaching the Millennium Development Goals thus depends on ambitious action across many sectors.
Designing a national strategy to achieve the Goals can be accomplished even in the poorest countries if there are intensive efforts from all parties to:
· improve governance,
· actively engage and empower civil society,
· promote entrepreneurship and the private sector,
· mobilize domestic resources,
· substantially increase aid to countries that need it to support MDG-based priority investments, and
· Make suitable policy reforms at the global level, such as those in trade.
Can social workers in Canada benefit from the Millennium Village approach to poverty reduction and elimination? How can the Millennium Goals approach be applied to urban and rural poverty in Canada? Are the Millennium Goals universal enough to give guidance to social workers who work in the community development field of social work?
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