A friend recently sent me this quotation from Robert F Kennedy in a speech he made 40 years ago in 1968. It is still fresh today:
 
“Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product… counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts... the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
“Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”  University of Kansas March 18th 1968.

1.4 Billion Reasons ....

Hugh Evans, former Young Australian of the Year and member of the team behind the MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY concert that involved BONO, did a whirlwind one week tour through New Zealand at the end of August, to present  the  Global Poverty Project's  ‘1.4 Billion Reasons’. If you missed out on the presentations, don't panic! The aim of the Global Poverty Project is to train a number of people in New Zealand to bring the experience to as many groups as possible.

With the support of Hugh Jackman, Global Advisor to the Global Poverty Project, and an expert  international panel, Evans and co-founder, Simon Moss, have developed the groundbreaking presentation to catalyse the international movement to end extreme poverty. This presentation aims to powerfully communicate the challenges and opportunities around tackling extreme poverty, working as a platform to inform and enable individuals to become actively involved in eradicating poverty.

Former Prime Minister Helen Clark has appealed to international leaders to honour their promises of aid despite the economic downturn. Now Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, Clark urged all countries who had promised aid to "maintain" if not "increase their current level of support" to nations in need. Clark stressed that providing assistance was a "moral imperative" especially because "those least responsible for the economic crisis stand to bear the brunt of its effects." She talked specifically of the need to empower women and assist those in extreme poverty, saying that it is in everyone's interests to help those in need.

Regardless of debate surrounding the nature of government aid, the appeal to generosity in a time when budgets are tightening is an important reminder that strong societies depend on people taking responsibility to support one another.

Read Helen Clark's full speech here

Thanks to Maxim Institute for bringing this item to our attention

With only six years until the 2015 deadline, donor countries are falling short in meeting aid commitments made in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and aid is likely to drop even further as a result of the negative economic climate, according to the UN progress report Millennium Development Goals Report 2009. There has been significant progress, but there are also important areas where the world is falling behind in efforts to achieve these goals.