Home  About  In the News  Publications  Blog  Join  Donate  Each year, the incoming leaders of Roosevelt Institution chapters gather at the FDR Estate in Hyde Park, New York. Photos by Nick Bradley. Announcements National Expo: July 11th Hyde Park Summit: August 14-17 Essay Winners Announced in The Nation On Campus Iowa Chapter Holds Forum Zach Hindin in the GW Hatchet Coverage of the Johns Hopkins Chapter Launch > More "You get more joy out of the giving to others, and should put a good deal of thought into the happiness you are able to give." — Eleanor Roosevelt    Achieving U.N. Millennium Development Goals > Roosevelt Home > Roosevelt Challenges > Achieving U.N. Millennium Development Goals By Brent A Pencak Categories: Diversity, race, and opportunity, International development, Poverty and social justice The Challenge: Create solutions to attain the eight UN Millennium Development Goals Important Progressive: accomplishing this challenge will contribute directly and specifically to the progressive values embodied by Roosevelt's Statement of Principles Meaningful: our contribution to this challenge will produce a real change in the lives of our fellow human beings. One can imagine a world in which the challenge is solved, and such a world is better than the one we live in today. The UN made eight goals in 2000 to acieve by 2015: - Halve the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day - Ensure all children complete primary school - Educate boys and girls equally - Reduce the mortality rate among children under five by two-thirds - Reduce the maternal mortality rate by three-quarters - Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases - Halve the proportion of people without access to safe water and sanitation - Increase aid and improve governance July 7, 2007 was the half-way point and as of now, little progress has been made. This topic is all encompassing internationally and a great way for the Roosevelt Institution to expand its policy research. These goals have been deemed important for the United Nations to pursue to make a meaningful impact on the world. Achieving these goals will make the world, especially the third world, a better place. Innovative We're looking for policy challenges where innovation is needed: where there isn't already a clear solution or best practices, but solutions can be developed creatively. Our goal is to develop options, not to lobby or advocate for a solution that is already known or to debate among several yes or no outcomes or pre-defined policy choices. Other organizations do the important work of debating and lobbying, that's just not our place in the process. Typically if you're looking at a standard policy debate you can apply what's known as the "Roosevelt Reframe" to develop new strategies to advance shared values. So rather than "should we engage in race-based affirmative action in college admissions" to which the potential answers are "yes" and "no", you can ask "how do we make our colleges more diverse", a goal we hope is shared by those on both sides of that debate. This challenge is broad and little progress has been made. There is an infinite amount of policy that can be made. Anything from finding a better way to cheaply supply clean water to proposing a program that will encourage people to donate more to aid programs. Feasible Approachable: given the level of research and discourse already available and given who else is working on the issue, college students with a range of experience levels and with varied types of expertise can contribute meaningfully to the debate and are likely to think of good ideas. We don't want something so technical only engineering majors can contribute to it, or something that is already dominated by another think tank or advocacy organization. Practical: the challenge is stated as a specific, measurable, and achievable goal, incremental progress toward which could be made by chipping away at the problem at various levels of government. The statement is not too broad or too narrow. One good way to make sure something is a good policy challenge rather than a debate or advocacy problem is to think of what sorts of innovative ideas might be produced for the 25 ideas publication series on that topic. There exists a good deal of research on the issues the UN wishes to address, such as reducing the poverty level and mortality rate. These goals are high standards, but measurable and attainalbe. There have not been solutions that have been very successful. What these problems need is to be addressed by those not constricted to traditional patterns of thought that run through diplomacy and may think outside of the box- something college students can provide. They can take the research avaible on the problems, and begin building new solutions. Then in turn contacting the Millenium Development Goals campaign with our policy ideas, we will build contacts within the organization that will help us submit our ideas, and possibly and future policy proposals we write.   The Roosevelt Institution is a nonpartisan, nonprofit national think tank devoted to bringing students' policy ideas to the policy process. The opinions expressed on this site are exclusively those of its members. DC Headquarters: Roosevelt Institution / 2100 M St NW Suite 610 / Washington, DC 20037 || (202) 833-1359