Millennium Development Goals.
Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
Goal 4: Reduce child mortality
Goal 5: Improve maternal health
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development
Each of these goals is further broken down for instance here is how goal number 1 is broken down
Target 1a: Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day
* 1.1 Proportion of population below $1 (PPP) per day
* 1.2 Poverty gap ratio
* 1.3 Share of poorest quintile in national consumption
Target 1b: Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people
* 1.4 Growth rate of GDP per person employed
* 1.5 Employment-to-population ratio
* 1.6 Proportion of employed people living below $1 (PPP) per day
* 1.7 Proportion of own-account and contributing family workers in total employment
Target 1c: Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger
* 1.8 Prevalence of underweight children under-five years of age
* 1.9 Proportion of population below minimum level of dietary energy consumption
Source : UNDP website
Goal 1 is the most applicable to our work here at Ethnic Supplies this is because we strive to promote financial independence amongst African women. Why women you may ask, simply because they are the nerve centre of the home and if they are financially secure then the family benefits.
But there are challenges along the way to achieving Goal 1, the most common one is perhaps the unfair trade terms. If we look at cotton farmers for instance, whilst such farmers maybe subsidised in the USA there is no such luck for African Farmers. This makes their cotton very expensive and in the end they cannot sell it anywhere.
Then there are the second hand clothes that are shipped to Africa by the barrel load. Although these are given in good faith they actually have implications for those cotton farmers for African. Almost always these clothes end up on market stalls, are cheaper and fashionable, and with this in mind the African cotton farmer does not have a look in.
Just the other day I heard that some charities have decide to reconsider the practice so sending cheap clothes to Africa due to the implications for cotton farmers, not to mention the cheap imports from China.
When all this happens women and children are most affected and in order to understand the impact of all this on children it is important to look at reasons why children end up on the street.The single biggest reason is due to the breaking down of family and some of the reasons that families break up include violence in the home as well as poverty. Worklesseness, lack of education, lack of access to markets are some of the reasons that families may be poor.
Families will send children out to work or simply ask them to live because they cannot afford to keep them. In certain instances these children simply go out to work to contribute to the family's income and return home each day but some are unable to return if there is violence or insufficient resources to enable the family to keep them. The children then end up on the street.
A UK based charity Street Child Africa is leading the way on addressing this issue.
So as you can see by supporting our work at Ethnic Supplies you not only do your bit to support the achievement of Millinnium goal 1 but you also contribute towards ending child poverty as well as reducing the number of children on the streets of Africa
this young boy passes his days "harvesting" stones.
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