Millenium development goals

In 2000, the world leaders of 189 nations, including Australia, gathered together and committed themselves to tackling global poverty. The ensuing Declaration consisted of eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to be achieved by 2015.

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

According to the Australian Catholic Bishop’s Social Justice Statement “Lazarus at our Gate: A critical moment in the fight against world poverty”, the proportion of people in the world living in extreme poverty has been halved since 1990.

The benchmark for extreme poverty is an income of $US1.25 per day.

It is estimated that by 2015 almost one billion people will be living on an income of less than $1.25 a day

What does this mean?

How could you live on $US1.25 per day? With the exchange rate at the moment this is about $AU1.40 per day. Does that make it any easier?

A sample spreadsheet that we workshopped looks something like below. We made it easy by just focusing on the essentials of food. But we have cheated a bit, because we haven’t added the cost of power (electricity, gas, or oil), water, housing, and other items.

Buying only generic brand products we came up with this basket to see what a month’s (30 days) groceries might look like with a $AU42 budget ($US37.50).

What is left over at the end of the month would need to be saved to purchase other items such as soap, toothpaste, toilet paper. No room in this budget for the latest smart phone or internet browsing!

Could you survive? And remember, 1 billion people subsist on less than that!