UN Millennium Development Goals

There's an opportunity to use a conferencing tool, but only if your objectives are all related to achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

Anyway, I found out what those 8 UN Millennium Development Goals are:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
2. Achieve universal primary education.
3. Promote gender equality and empower women.
4. Reduce child mortality.
5. Improve maternal health.
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.
7. Ensure environmental sustainability.
8. Develop a global partnership for development.

How can the internet help? Perhaps educators can use the web and help achieve Goal #2: "Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling."

I wonder if this is for real: 2004 data shows that the Net Enrollment Ratio in Primary Education in the Philippines is at 94 percent. I find that figure rather high. Then again, that was four years ago. But I digress...

Philanthropists can help provide the infrastructure: venue, access to electricity, internet connection. Yet we will still need people to serve as teachers. You know, as in face-to-face education. The internet will mainly be used by teachers to help fellow educators in the various regions of the Philippines.

If you wish, even students can use the web to interact with other students or youth groups. It won't matter whether someone is in Metro Manila or Davao, because the internet will help bridge the distance.

Still, I can't help shake the feeling that something is missing. True, someone can funnel in lots of funding, but then what? What will the people "read" once they're online? What will they talk about? What knowledge will they share with one another?

And that's why I choose to ask other groups about the "Content Development" issue first, before we even get down to the ICT topics. Content first, technology next.

[ First posted on 03/17/2008 by Manuel Viloria ]