Throughout the past year I’ve grown skeptical of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Honorably, the MDGs highlight the tremendous need throughout the globe by addressing poverty, education, health, gender equality, and environmental sustainability.  While the grandeur and compassion expressed in these goals is moving, multilaterals, bilaterals, nongovernmental organizations, contracting agencies, faith based organizations, and even private foundations have managed to turn the MDGs into a multi-billion dollar industry which all too often emphasizes “field trips” or the need for business class travel rather than investing in the development of rigid monitoring and evaluation techniques designed to measure and demonstrate legitimate programmatic impact.  Too many of these organizations continue to receive significant funding regardless of their limited ability to demonstrate results.  This past Sunday however, my skepticism was challenged as we considered the MDGs during our “Dinner and Conversation.”

Eight stations representing the eight MDGs were set up around Patterson Park and the group spent time in prayer and meditation as we moved through each location.  The goals were represented in a variety of ways and one can imagine how strange the group appeared to onlookers as we smashed a rock with a hammer, dug in a sandbox, and played with play-doh (add in the blaring Latin music playing in the background from a nearby festival and we must have looked downright odd- at least more odd than normal).  Despite the strong winds carrying an imminent rainstorm, onlookers walking dogs the size of small horses, and the raucous music, I was moved by the experience.  One station in particular reminded me of one of my own “field trips” to Africa.  Representing the seventh MDG of ensuring environmental sustainability which includes the target of reducing by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water, the station consisted of a long chain of small rocks leading to a water source, each pebble symbolizing increased distance to an individual’s access to water.  The station instructed participants to remove one rock and I was shocked at what I recognized when I did so- the chain was shorter.  There were probably thirty little rocks in the chain leading to the water source and only ten of us, but little by little the distance to clean water decreased.  As I held the removed pebble in my hand I was taken back to the Aïr Mountains north of Zinder, Niger.

The jagged red peaks beaten by the desert winds serve as the gateway from the Sahel to the Sahara- they are beautiful, mysterious, and intimidating all at once.  In between our vehicle and the looming Aïr Mountains are sparsely populated communities, at least 80 miles from the nearest “town.”  The SUV stops near a borehole crowded with Nigerien women from nearby huts dressed in colors so bright that they drown out the blazing African sun.  As one might imagine, water is incredibly sparse in the Sahel and before the implementation of the well, women would walk for miles each day to fetch whatever water they could find.  As I held the small rock in my hand on Sunday, I thought of that well.  It was by no means an end to all of the suffering experienced in those communities; it had indeed caused significant disputes between the local population and the nongovernmental organization I worked for.  It was also a temporary solution; the water would run out leaving the need unmet once more.  However, on that particular day the well removed a barrier faced by the community.  The well had been and continues to promote health and education; it was and is a start, just like the small grey rock that I held in my hand…

Am I still skeptical of the MDGs and humanitarian aid in general?  Absolutely.  I am convinced that we can and must do better to serve the underserved throughout the world.  I believe that parts of the humanitarian industry have neglected humanity, are broken, selfish, and in need of serious correction and realignment.  However, I am also confident that one small pebble at a time, we get closer to a world we hope for.