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Niños del Milenio Exhibition Launch in London. September 2005
In September 2005, Young Lives launched a photography exhibition on child poverty issues in Peru. The result of an open competition organised by the Young Lives project, Niños del Milenio showcased the work of a host of contemporary Peruvian photographers, and was curated by the Young Lives Peru National Co-ordinator, Eliana Villar. In London, the exhibition was hosted by Canning House from 6 to 16 September 2005.
The launch evening featured a talk by renowned Peruvian economist Dr. Enrique Vasquez on child poverty in Peru and Latin America in the context of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Many of the universally agreed MDGs aim to dramatically reduce child poverty around the world, and the international community met to review progress towards the Goals at the UN MDG + 5 Summit, September 14-16 2005. Thus, the exhibition launch event provided a timely insight into, and opportunity for discussing, the significance of the MDGs in Latin America.
Dr. Vasquez’s presentation was accompanied by the premiere of a Peruvian documentary on the same theme. The documentary, entitled 'The Millennium Objectives: A Lost Opportunity?', was commissioned by Young Lives Peru, and is available upon request (email younglives@younglives.org.uk).
Talk by Dr. Enrique Vasquez on child poverty.
Young Lives & The Millennium Development Goals
At their core, the Millennium Development Goals are about poverty reduction, setting a baseline for the fulfilment of basic human needs as a way to promote human and social development. The MDGs have a special focus on children, and the Young Lives project – an international study of childhood poverty in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam – is particularly concerned with the child-related Goals. Through its research over a fifteen-year period, Young Lives is well positioned to understand the macro level causes that can have micro level impacts on children’s poverty status, analyzing the effects on their communities, their families, household decisions and on children themselves.
In particular, Young Lives is concerned with looking at the policies needed at different levels of government and society to progress towards effective poverty reduction. This includes the achievement of the MDGs as they relate to the fulfilment of children’s basic needs, but also moves beyond them by examining the social dynamics that perpetuate poverty, the inequalities across gender, ethnicities and regions that need to be targeted to ensure that all children are effectively included in policies. Importantly, Young Lives also advocates for child poverty to be understood as a multi-dimensional reality, which needs to be addressed not only by effective social policies, but also through the mainstreaming of children’s concerns into broader national and sub-national policy strategies.
The Young Lives team is currently working on a paper on children and the Millennium Development Goals, analysing how achieving the goals and meeting the targets implies a movement towards child poverty reduction. The paper will focus on the progress made by each of the four Young Lives countries towards the MDGs, looking more closely at the relevance of the goals in each context, their influence on each country’s poverty reduction strategies and how the MDGs, their targets and indicators need to be adapted nationally to meet local priorities and thus be reflected in relevant policies. This paper will be available on this web site once it has been completed.