Millennium Development Goals 101 - Lesson 1

Social and sustainable economic development for the world, now there is a subject you can sink your teeth into. Thanks to a reader comment on my last posting "U.N. Delegation from Uganda" I have been "yanked-away" from breathing fire at Khartoum and made to focus on a topic which is one of the basis points for starting this blog in the first place. Thanks Mshairi.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDG's) is probably one of the most comprehensive initiatives to come out of the U.N. and its member nations for decades. As Mshairi has so eloquently pointed out in her comment, it is extremely important that we (we = the Whole World) successfully fulfill our promises and responsibilities as set forth in the MDG's for 2015___ and beyond.

I became interested in some MDG progress reports myself after Mshairi brought it up in her comment, so I did a little search (using Google of course, since they support us Blogger bloggers big time). Here is what I was able to find on Google in like 0-comma-zip seconds:

The UNDP (U.N. Development Programme) has all kinds of very good websites, and one of them is focused on Human Development Reports (HDR's). The Human Development Report 2003 has a lot of detailed information on where we (we = the Whole World) are at the moment on the MDG 2015 performance scale and timeline. The complete HDR 2003 is massive folks (6.5+MB pdf-file download) so watchout if you only have a dial-up internet connection, you'll be downloading all day. The report is also broken-down into smaller parts for easier digestion and downloading, fortunately. Smart and very considerate of the web design team at UNDP.

Note also that this UNDP site has some very interesting facts listed on their Do you know webpage. Here is one little factoid from this cool mini-site for your reflection:

Did you know that...
A baby born in Zambia today can have a life expectancy of just 32 years. A baby born in Japan can expect to live until the age of 82. (Ref. HDR 2004)

So, have fun on these excellent UNDP sites, although there is nothing funny about the subject matter. Don't miss the HDR Statistics site and the National HDR sites. Maybe we need to work on making careers in this field not only fulfilling, but also a lot of fun, and economically rewarding.

Hey, I see the UNDP design team is using Macromedia Cold-Fusion for their web development. I wonder what kinda database their running? Ummm, what is this HDR toolkit button... ___ ooh! Online learning courses too, cool.......... .