The Millennium Project is an initiative that focuses on research implementing the organizational means, operational priorities, and financing structures necessary to achieve the Millennium Development Goals or (MDGs). The goals are aimed at the reduction of poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women. At the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000 world leaders initiated the development of MDGs and had set a completion date for the project of June 2005.
In order to support the MDGs, both UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), Mark Malloch Brown, have launched the Millennium Project to determine the best strategies for achieving the MDGs. The Project is headed by Professor Jeffrey Sachs. The Millennium Project worked from 2002-2005 to devise a recommended plan of implementation that will allow all developing countries to meet the MDGs and thereby substantially improve the human condition by 2015. The Millennium Project presented its final recommendations, "Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals," to the Secretary-General in January 2005.
Ten theme-orientated task forces have been created in order to perform the majority of the research. The task forces are an amalgamation of representatives from the academic community, public and private sectors of society, civil society organizations, and UN agencies that also include participants from outside the UN. Each Task Force is composed of 15-20 members who are all international leaders in their specific area, and are selected on the basis of their practical experience and technical expertise.
Famous quotes containing the words united nations, united, nations, millennium and/or project:
“Emblem: the carapace of the great crowned snail is painted with all the flags of the United Nations.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian countries and of the moral judgment of Christians everywhere that if a man and a woman, entering a room together, close the door behind them, the man will come out sadder and the woman wiser.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“The trenchant editorials plus the keen rivalry natural to extremely partisan papers made it necessary for the editors to be expert pugilists and duelists as well as journalists. An editor made no assertion that he could not defend with fists or firearms.”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)