Africa scoring goals

There is a lot of good news about poverty these days.  A few days ago the High-level Panel appointed by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon turned in its 12-point recommendations about the future fight against poverty in the world beyond 2015.  Have a look at Amanda Jackson's summary for a brief review.

What's encouraging is that many of the 8 MDG goals of the past 13 years have survived.

Abdicating well

It's hard to convert the word "abdication" into something positive. When Edward VIII abdicated the throne of England to marry the twice-divorced American socialite, Mrs Simpson in 1936, he didn't help matters much.

But there seems to have been a spate of unusual and positive abdications in recent times.

A Prison Epistle

Fifty years ago today, Martin Luther King Jr wrote his famous ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’.  It was a considered and poignant response to a number of white clergy who thought that his civil rights actions against segregation in America, was anti Christian.

Countdown to 2015

Today (5 April 2013) marks the 1000 days countdown to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - those 8 promises which the world made in September 2000 to halve extreme poverty by 2015. These promises ignited the work we are doing as Micah Challenge  - gathering Christians across 40 nations to hold our governments to the promises they have made. 

It’s been an amazing journey. And part of its amazement is the fact that as I travel around the world, I discover that so many people still have no idea what ‘MDGs’ mean.  And when they do, the next question is usually, "How is it going: are the promises going to be kept by 2015?"