The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself. /Robert Ingersoll (1833 - 1899)/
I like Millenium Development Goals, they keep my believe that change can happen. But.. The change can't really be empowered to happen when people around refer to them as visionary goals to suceed. We want to give something away for developing world to make life on planet Earth better, to kill enemies called Hunger, Disease, Poverty and others.
Grandparents (and teachers afterwords) have been telling me that I can't change the world, if I am not able to start with myself, that first step is to look at myself, my family and then move upwords. This is why I want to start series of posts regarding to environment we live in and what change we can give or teach to developing world.
There still haven't been answer to question what is happiness, how we achieve it. Is it great car and huge house with expensive furniture. Is it private jet and vacations in start resorts. Or is it decent life with kids and grankids comming over for Sunday breakfast?
I believe that everyone will have his/her own answer to this question. But regarding development, are we aiming to develop life we live now? Who will vote that it is great and good?
My recent feeling is that we (developed world, industralised world) are moving to destruction. In US about 1% of households have more income then 95% together. The gap between poor and wealthy is becaming bigger and bigger. Will we find ourselves in poverty too? Recent financial crisis was like a blink to see how dependant our lives are in finacial system we are living in.
In my next blogs I am going to take a look to society we live in (Europe, US) and connect it with Millenium Development Goals. I will try to find out good practises. And I would ask you to try to make your own connections regarding society we live in and way we try to help developing world.
Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime. /Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)/
Hello Aija,
I fully support your question: Who says that our lives are great and good?
Last night I saw a documentary on TV about the ‘lost boys of Sudan’. The documentary followed about 10 Sudanese boys that were refugees and eventually ended up in the USA. Here they received a decent bed, plenty of food and a job. After one year abroad one of the boys commented: “I have everything my heart wants, but i miss my friends (the other refugees he had to leave behind) in Sudan. Here people ignore you. At home every stranger is welcome”. That made me think…...
@Johan
These are questions that are on my mind from start on. Evaluation of place, environment and attitude.
Because if MDG is like another project from UN in our world it loses some important sense. Development is sensitive issue. It could lead us to unexpected results..
I agree… what exactly are we aspiring the world to be when we talk about development. Do we want every country to be like the U.S, UK, Australia? Are these countries really what we should be aspiring to? I think we should be questioning what we’re developing towards - not just blindly go where we’ve already gone before.