Qué tal, a rundown on the MDGs

I know its been a WHILE since I have last posted and so many things have happened. I had a wonderful two weeks in Burlington filled with Maple creemees, biking and friends. Then I headed home for 3 short days to prepare for my trip to Ecuador. Well it´s been two and a half weeks and I am here, in the coastal port city of Guayaquil.

Since I cannot upload my pictures to share, I thought that a brief description of those lovely goals the United Nations calls the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) would be fitting. Between the group of people that I work with (including professor, awesome fellow blogger and hiker extraordinare, Trish Siplon) the term MDGs is thrown around a lot. For those of you readers who are not entirely familiar with the objectives that the UN would like the developing world to accomplish by 2015, this is how they break down:

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme hunger and poverty
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

Accomplishing these goals would signal the beginning of the end of worldwide poverty. In a perfect world these objectives would be attainable through the work of government and non-state actors. However, this is not the case and there are considerable roadblocks that are inhibiting progress. If you would like more information about how the targets and indicators for these goals, check out the UN´s MDG website: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/poverty.shtml. That´s all for now, I can´t wait to share with all of you what it is exactly that I have been working on. Stay cool!