ADRA and Millennium Development
Goals

Kara Watkins/ADRA International

Residents of Totogalpa, a small
Nicaraguan farming community skirting the country’s northern border with
Honduras, plant tomatoes, green peppers, zucchini and other non-traditional crops.
These days, the robust agricultural region is known for its high-quality
produce, but it wasn’t long ago that drastic climate swings left it desolate.
Then an Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) project helped
Totogalpan farmers overcome their dependence on locally grown grains by
equipping them with the tools, training and resources to diversify their crops.

The project is one of many that
fall under the United Nation’s first Millennium Development Goal: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
Initiated in 2002, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) challenge nations to
achieve measurable improvement in alleviating poverty and other crucial
humanitarian issues by the year 2015. From its beginnings in 1956, the
Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) has operated under the mission
of giving humanitarian aid and development assistance to all those in need.
Today, ADRA continues its mission, working alongside
the worldwide humanitarian community to fulfill the MDGs.

ADRA is also active in working
toward the UN’s 7 other Millennium Development Goals.

Achieve universal primary education

ADRA has always emphasized
education as the foundation for success, developing projects that provide both
children and adults — especially girls and women — with the opportunity to
attend school to learn the basics of reading, writing, and math, and perhaps a
marketable job skill.

In Lima, ADRA Peru provides tuition for vocational training
and psychological support to impoverished street kids ages 14 to 18 — an often
forgotten age group. Most teens in the program have had troubled childhoods.
They now live in shelters with other teens who grew up on the streets or left
home because of domestic or sexual abuse or other family problems.

Once finished with the nine to twelve month vocational
courses, which include several months of practical training, the young people
are equipped to find jobs or even open their own businesses. More importantly,
they are prepared to embrace a more hopeful future.

Promote gender equality and empower women

ADRA Peru is promoting gender
equality with a project to strengthen women’s rights in the region of Ayacucho.
The project works with local women in the region, educating them about their
rights, building their capacity, and increasing their representation as
decision-making citizens at all levels of society. In addition, the project
supports civil society organizations and promotes women’s economic
participation.

Also in South America, female
heads of household and women who have been displaced by civil war in Colombia
are becoming empowered through vocational training and personal development
classes provided by ADRA.

Women make up nearly half of
Colombia’s internationally displaced population, and ADRA Colombia has helped
hundreds achieve financial independence by offering hands-on training in
tailoring and cosmetology. The women also participate in health education,
women’s rights, and personal development classes designed to improve their
quality of life and self-esteem.

Reduce child mortality

ADRA Cambodia is helping to reduce
child mortality by creating "Child Friendly Villages." The multi-year project
is improving the quality of health and reducing the morbidity and mortality of
more than 22,500 women of reproductive age and more than 17,400 children under
five in the Baray-Santuk district of the Kampong Thom province of Cambodia.

A village-level initiative, the
project trains and empowers village leaders, volunteers, and traditional birth
attendants, who then teach local women of child-bearing age about proper
nutrition, birth spacing, breast-feeding, and pre-natal, labor and delivery,
and post-natal care — all important factors affecting infant and child health.

Addressing the most common health
problems affecting village mothers and children, the project also ensures
villagers have access to clean water and sanitation, provides education classes
in health, hygiene, and sanitation, and coordinates community-based nutrition
activities. In addition, women learn how to grow home gardens that improve
household nutrition and provide a source of income, and attend literacy classes
to help build knowledge and improve family livelihoods.

Improve maternal health                       

ADRA Nepal reports that one woman
in Nepal dies every two hours due to preventable pregnancy-related causes.
Contributing factors include inadequate health care facilities and trained
health care staff, lack of equipment and pharmaceuticals, and cultural and
geographical barriers.

In response, ADRA Nepal has launched
the Safe Motherhood Innovation Project (SMIP). The SMIP project reduces
maternal mortality and morbidity rates through training maternal health care
staff, improving access and quality of maternal health services, increasing
community awareness of Safe Motherhood issues, and establishing an active
maternal health network.

Funded by the European Commission
through ADRA Germany, the project will directly benefit nearly 270,000 women
ages 15 to 49 living in Nepal’s Eastern Development Region. The project will
also directly benefit 3,610 female community health volunteers, 979 traditional
birth attendants, and hundreds of other health care workers.

Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases

HIV/AIDS

Since 1985, ADRA has implemented
successful HIV and AIDS projects that have reached more than 10 million people
worldwide. In February 2004, ADRA’s Training of Trainers (TOT) program began
training hundreds of religious leaders, teachers, and healthcare workers in
hospitals and schools to counsel people infected or affected by HIV. The TOT
program has already reached more than 220,000 people directly and more
than 1,000,000 indirectly.

The trainers provide counseling to
community members on a continuous, voluntary basis. Along with offering HIV and
AIDS awareness and education to reduce HIV infections, TOT participants provide
counseling and support services that help improve the quality of life, increase
access to medical care, empower, encourage social wellbeing, and preserve the
rights of vulnerable groups in their communities, such as women and people
living with AIDS.

Malaria

Almost six million cases of
malaria are reported per year in Mozambique, where the disease is a major cause
of death. Malaria also contributes to the high level of poverty throughout the southeastern
African country by reducing productivity, especially in rural areas.

ADRA Mozambique is fighting
malaria at the grassroots level with the Together Against Malaria (TAM)
project. Funded through President Bush’s Malaria Initiative by a grant worth
nearly $2 million, TAM is an interfaith project that will reach more than 1.5
million Mozambicans.

"TAM represents an integral
partnership between ADRA, the Inter-Religious Campaign, the Washington National
Cathedral’s Center for Global Justice and Reconciliation, the Mozambique
Ministry of Health, and the United States government," explains Darcy de Leon,
country director for ADRA Mozambique.

The project is training more than
250 faith leaders from ten distinct religions to provide health education,
train other individuals, and mobilize their unique faith communities to work
together in fighting the spread of malaria.

Ensure environmental sustainability

ADRA’s
humanitarian and development efforts also take environmental sustainability
into consideration. Natural resource management is a vital component of ADRA’s
initiatives to improve food source sustainability throughout the world.

With
ADRA’s help, communities learn to grow
food with water-saving agricultural methods and irrigation systems, manage seedling nurseries, replant forests, build living
fences, protect watersheds, and clear agricultural land responsibly. In the
process, communities reestablish damaged environments, improve soil quality,
grow diet-enriching fruits, vegetables, and nuts, and create stable, marketable
sources of income.

ADRA also utilizes
"green" technology, installing solar powered wells in Namibia and wind-powered
wells in Somalia, both of which provide vulnerable communities with low-cost,
reliable, environmentally friendly water supplies. Using innovative straw-bale
technology, ADRA China has built hundreds of energy-efficient homes and
schools.

Build a global partnership for development

Successfully meeting MDGs 1
through 7 hinges upon the partnership and accountability of rich and poor
countries, governments, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as ADRA.
In every country where it works, ADRA’s efforts are made more effective through
its cooperative relationships with partner organizations and collaborations
with a variety of government and NGO partners at all levels: community,
regional, state and provincial, national, and international, including the
United Nations.

The United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) oversees the Millennium Development Goals and monitors their
progress. More information about the MDGs can be found on the UNDP Web site at www.undp.org/mdg.

For more information about ADRA
and its worldwide development activities, visit www.adra.org.