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WE ARE THE FIRST GENERATION THAT CAN END POVERTY
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Our mission and a little about our group’s background |
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OUR LONGWINDED MISSION Our goal is to mobilize the Notre Dame community in order to contribute to the larger, global effort to fight for social justice and against extreme poverty. to foster awareness and enact real and feasible action toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.
Today, over one billion people—one in six people around the world—live in extreme poverty. According to the World Bank, this is defined as living on less than one U.S. dollar per day. “Furthermore, more than 800 million people go hungry each day; and each year, more than eight million people around the world die because they are too poor to stay alive.” (netaid.org)
Men, women, and children are suffering from obstacles that prevent them from fulfilling their most basic human rights and achieving their full potential. The issues of poverty are many and complex, and initiatives must be taken to end poverty and the violence, injustices, and inequalities that are greatly linked to it.
These injuries are due to the harsh reality that poverty is a form of structural violence, in which those who do not have money lack power as well. This lack of power in the social and political realms inhibits the impoverished from having a voice. Without a voice, they cannot promote change, or may not even be aware of the change which is needed. Poverty and injustice can be eradicated only when the world’s poor and excluded are able to take a stand and claim their rights and become self-sufficient. We believe the global community, both governments and other (non-governmental) groups that hold power, have a responsibility to ensure the rights of those that face social exclusion because of poverty.
Millennium Development Goals, established at the UN summit meeting in 2000, are about “establishing freedom from misery and suffering, from hunger, from illiteracy, from disease, from poor housing and from insecurity. These and many other inequalities are in need of our recognition, time, and commitment.” (millennium.org) The 8 Millennium Development Goals were adopted in order to form a global partnership to eradicate these inequalities associated with extreme poverty by 2015. While progress is being made and the feasibility has been demonstrated, there is still a great need for us to strengthen the current efforts in order to continue making progress.
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Welcome to the ND-8 website. We are a group dedicated to informing the Notre Dame community about the importance and feasibility of the UN Millennium Development Goals. We are dedicated to making these goals more then just a set of ideals, but instead a priority and reality.
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ND-8 is a student group that was formally recognized by the Student Activities Office of ND in 2007. ND-8 formerly partnered with the CSC under the name Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Task Force. Last year the MDG Task Force raised over $16,000 for the organization Malaria No More, which used the money to provide insecticide treated bed nets for children in Africa.
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ND-8 |
