Recommendation List:

The eight UN Millennium goals are: (1) Eradicate extreme poverty. (2)Achieve universal primary education. (3) Promote gender equality and empower women. (4) Reduce child mortality. (5)Improve maternal health (6) Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases (7) Ensure environmental sustainability. (8) Develop a global partnership for development. The government promised that these goals will be accomplished by 2015. The governments face many difficulties and obstacles that may hinder accomplishing these goals by 2015. Below is a list of recommendations that should be taken into consideration:

MDG, Global Issues

1.UN Volunteers - Access to services and service delivery for disadvantaged groups and communities is identified as the first of three areas of distinctive contribution that UNV makes to development. UNVs strengthen the functioning of volunteer-involving organizations to ensure that they represent the interest of local stakeholders, provide information to communities, and encourage the sharing of knowledge. The use of UNVs creates a greater understanding of local needs and effective delivery processes as well as facilitating dialogue and coordination between institutions. In addition, the use of national volunteers improves long-term sustainability, as they can better integrate into the community and the capacity developed remains within the country. For example, in Ethiopia, national UN Volunteers with expertise in water and environment, nutrition, and education are also contributing to enhancing involvement of communities in development planning, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation of progress.[3]


2. Engaging Partners –Experience has also demonstrated the importance of effectively engaging the civil society and the private sector in planning, implementation and maintenance. In Guatemala, community organized groups enhance women's participation and facilitate the establishment of a community's group administration and maintenance of the systems that are provided.[3]

3. Reduce Governmental Corruption­ – This never ending issue of government corruption is one of the main reasons why the 8 goals may be delayed. It affects many sectors of the goals especially when it comes to the economy and it is a road block when trying to sustain development in underdeveloped countries. Citizens must be educated, empowered, and equality must be enforced in order to eradicate or minimize government corruption.


Sustainable Development

4. Use remote sensing technology and communication networks to ensure effective
monitoring and resource management, mitigation, and environmental risk. [6]

5.Facilitate knowledge exchange and networking among policymakers, practitioners, and advocacy groups. [6]

6. Leaders to manage systems – Powerful world leaders, politicians, teachers, business people, must get involved in the management of systems that will in the end build economy, provide accountable services, and aid in sustaining all system in underdeveloped countries. These leaders should be recognized as “Reliable Partners”

7. Educate community – Educate the community on how to use these systems or the minor sectors of such systems. This can promote employment and also allow to citizen to be involved in business functions that will ultimately give them the potential to start their own businesses.


Globalization/Collaborative and Social Networking Activities
8. Increase access to reproductive health information including information on HIV/AIDS prevention and make it available in all languages. [6]

Role of ICT in building Sustainable Development.

9. Use of E- government/governance to not only inform citizens of services provided and information on the world, but to promote relationships between citizens and government.

10. Increase monitoring/tracking on disease and famine. [5]

11. Deliver educational and literacy programs specially targeted to poor people using special technologies. [6]

12. Increase supply of trained teachers through ICT-enhanced and distance training of teachers and networks that link teachers to their colleges. Improve the efficiency and effectiveness of education ministries and related bodies through strategic applications of technology and ICT-enabled skilled development. [6]

13. Increase access to market information and reduce transaction costs for poor farmers and traders. [6]

Your Role

14. Make a Personal Commitment - In the end, however, it comes back to us, as individuals. Individuals, working in one-accord, form and shape societies. Social commitments are commitments of individuals. Great social forces, Robert F. Kennedy once stated: "Let no one be discouraged by the belief there is nothing one man or woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills — against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence . . . . Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation."[2]

15. Join the campaign to end Poverty 2015 – The millennium goals may not be achieved if everyone does not play a role. We can write letters, start petitions, and reach out to any government to remind them that we expect them to deliver what they promised, which is that the eight millennium goals will be accomplished by 2015. Everyone’s voice counts.[4]

16. Promote Sustainable Development - While targeted investments in health, education, and infrastructure can unlock the trap of extreme poverty, the continuing environmental degradation at local, regional and planetary scales threatens the long-term sustainability of all our social gains. Ending extreme poverty can relieve many of the pressures on the environment. When impoverished households are more productive on their farms, they face less pressure to cut down neighboring forests in search of new farmland. When their children survive with high probability, they have less incentive to maintain very high fertility rates with the attendant downside of rapid population growth. Still, even as extreme poverty ends, the environmental degradation related to industrial pollution and the long-term climate change associated with massive use of fossil fuels will have to be addressed. There are ways to confront these environmental challenges without destroying prosperity (for example, by building smarter power plants that capture and dispose of their carbon emissions and by increasing use of renewable energy sources). As we invest in ending extreme poverty, we must face the ongoing challenge of investing in the global sustainability of the world’s ecosystems. [1]

References:
[1]http://www.undp.org.my/uploads/files/Strategies_basic_services_rural_


[2]http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/films.php?id=16311

[3] http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/


[4] http://endpoverty2015.org/about
[5] Tongia, R., Subrahmanian, E., Arunachalam, V., Information and Communications Technology for Sustainable Development Defining a Global Research Agenda, (2005), Chapter 1, Allied Publishers, Bangalore found at:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rtongia/ICT4SD_Ch_1--Introduction--Sustainable_Development_&_ICT.pdf

[6] Tongia, R., Subrahmanian, E., Arunachalam, V., Information and Communications Technology for Sustainable Development Defining a Global Research Agenda, (2005), Chapter 2, Allied Publishers, Bangalore found at:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rtongia/ICT4SD_Ch_2--ICT.pdf