Aiming to halve the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by 2015, the targets also include goals for primary education, gender equality in school, reduced mortality of children and mothers, reproductive health and the environment. Christian Aid firmly supports the international development targets and strategy. These ambitious goals represent a challenge for a partnership of actors, starting from the experience and efforts of the poor themselves. Christian Aid is addressing this report to the international development community as a contribution to making the targets operational.
Targets are useful in two ways.
Their direct appeal can serve as a tool to mobilise people and governments into action and generate resources. They also make it possible to measure progress. Lessons can be learned from the international community's experience with past targets. As the beginning of a process of 'people's monitoring' of the targets, we asked poor people in Uganda and Guatemala how they saw poverty and how the targets might help them. Interviews in the field indicate that people experience poverty in diverse and complex ways.