Millennium development Goals

We can help change the world one step at a time. These are the goals that my subjects aims in helping to achieve. 

Un.org. 2014. United Nations Millennium Development Goals. [online] Available at: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/environ.shtml [Accessed: 25 Mar 2014].

Endpoverty2015.org. 2014. End Poverty 2015 | We are the generation that can end poverty. [online] Available at: http://www.endpoverty2015.org/ [Accessed: 29 Mar 2014].

We can help end poverty and increase the living standards of individuals and help them in bettering their lives through these millennium goals. Using our resources to benefit consumers lives and living. 

Goal 7: Environmental sustainability

YouTube. 2014. UN Millennium Campaign Goal 7 Environmental Sustainability. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix-1XFQDlUU [Accessed: 2 Apr 2014].

Without our environment we will not be able to live and inhabit planet earth. Sustaining our earth should be our main priority because without it we would all be dead. Environmental initiatives can start from home, go into schools and into businesses. You can't have healthy people without a healthy planet. Being able to use resources without them running out - this is how we need to ensure of resources are sustainable for future generations. Half the number of people who don't have access to safe drinking water, people either have to walk far to get clean water or pay to get water. Many people steal safe drinking water or drink dirty water which either kills them or makes them sick. Improving the lives of slum dwellers will help in building our countries futures and achieving sustainable living for all. Communities need to work together to achieve environmentally sustainability 
Reducing green house gasses is a huge impact and will help in reducing the whole in our ozone layer which later affects climate change. Climate change affect the living of individuals and makes people ill. 
We can get clean energy but this is harder and takes more effort and this is what prevents individuals from doing this. 

Goal 2: Universal Primary Education

YouTube. 2014. Attain United Nations MDG 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPTGWGoGMW4 [Accessed: 2 Apr 2014].

Millennium development goals - helping to achieve universal primary education for all children this will help in bettering their future. We have the money, knowledge and power to be able to achieve this all we need is global acknowledgement and individuals fighting together to achieve this. Children would rather be educated then start working. Having an education can help them in achieving their life goals in becoming doctors, engineers or teachers or what ever they aspire to be but without education this is not possible. Achieving universal education for all will not only benefit the economy but better the individuals, society and more. 

This goal is a huge goal that will take a lot of hard work and dedication to achieve it but it is possible if we all fight together. 

The Millennium Development Goals that are addressed in my Essay

MDG 2: ACHIEVE UNIVERSAL PRIMARY EDUCATION

The Goal: Achieve Universal Primary Education

What Do We Want To Achieve?

• Ensure that all children, boys and girls alike, can complete a full course of primary schooling

What Have We Already Achieved?

• Between 1999 and 2009, 43 million children worldwide were enrolled in primary education
• The rate of enrollment in sub-Saharan African has increased from 58 to 76 per cent
• Some of the most impoverished countries are those that have most advanced the access to universal primary education

What Challenges Remain?

• There are still 61 million children left to enroll in schooling worldwide and more than half of them live in sub-Saharan Africa
• The youth illiteracy rate exceeds more than 120 million people worldwide

What we want to achieve is slowing getting their, and have achieved is slowing happening. To achieve goals like primary education for all it takes not only time and money but patience and dedication. Change takes time and time is a huge factor as for those consumers whom do not have time this can negatively impact their lives. 

MDG 7: ENSURE ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

The Goal: Ensure Environmental Sustainability

What Do We Want To Achieve?

• Incorporate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and reverse the loss of environmental resources

• Decrease biodiversity loss
• Reduce the number of people without access to safe drinking water and sanitation by half
• Improve the lives of at least 100 million people who live in slums by 2020

What Have We Already Achieved?

• In 2010, 89% of the world’s population, about 6.1 billion people, had access to safe drinking water. In 2015, that number will increase to include 92% of the world’s population
• We have improved the lives of more than 200 million people living in slums
• 1,800 people have gained access to basic sanitation

What Challenges Remain?

• 2.6 billion people remain without access to healthcare
• 17,000 species of plants and animals are endangered
• The atmospheric levels of substances that destroy the ozone layer could increase 10-fold by 2015

This shows how countries are developing and contributing towards changing and solving these problems within society. Incorporating sustainable practices is hard in the begging because everyone needs to be on the same page and want to achieve the same thing. It takes time, education and money and support from those whom have the financial means. Sustaining our environment for future generations is not easy and needs to be addressed now before it is beyond our control.

Un.org. 2014. United Nations Millennium Development Goals. [online] Available at: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/environ.shtml [Accessed: 25 Mar 2014].

Endpoverty2015.org. 2014. End Poverty 2015 | We are the generation that can end poverty. [online] Available at: http://www.endpoverty2015.org/ [Accessed: 29 Mar 2014].

Green Schools - Not only environmentally friendly BUT generate cost savings!

Green schools are not only environmentally friendly but also generate cost savings in the
form of reduced water and energy usage. The standard for green schools is LEED, a framework
for building schools that meet certain benchmarks for sustainability.

Many private schools are taking the pledge of the Green Schools Alliance to make their schools
more sustainable and to reduce their carbon footprint by 30% over five years and to achieve carbon
neutrality by 2020. There are steps that parents and students can take separately from their school to
reduce energy usage and waste, and students and parents can also work with their schools to determine
the school's energy use and how to reduce it over time.

Steps Parents and Students Can Take

Parents and students can also contribute to making their schools greener and can take easy-to-implement
steps such as the following:

• Encourage parents and kids to use public transportation or to walk or bike to school.
• Use carpools to bring many students to school together.
• Reduce idling outside school; instead, turn off car and bus engines.
• Encourage the school to use buses with cleaner fuels, such as biodiesel or to start investing in hybrid buses.
• During community service days, have students replace existing incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents.
• Ask the school to use environmentally friendly cleaning fluids and non-toxic pesticides.
• Encourage the lunch room to avoid using plastics.
• Spearhead the use of "trayless" eating. Students and teachers can carry their food instead of using trays, and the lunchroom staff won't have to wash trays, thereby reducing water use.
• Work with your maintenance staff to put stickers on paper towel and napkin dispensers reminding students and teachers to use paper products sparingly.
• Encourage your school to sign the Green Schools Initiative.
• Learn other steps you can take at the Green Schools Initiative.

  How Schools Can Reduce Energy Usage

  In addition, students can work with the administration and maintenance staff at their
  schools to reduce the energy usage of their schools. First, students can conduct an audit
  of their school's light and energy use and then monitor the school's energy use on a monthly
  basis. The Green Schools Alliance provides students with a step-by-step plan to create a task
  force and reduce carbon emissions over a suggested two-year time table. Their helpful tool kit
  provides your school with actions you can take such as replacing incandescent bulbs with compact
  fluorescent lights, using daylight instead of overhead lighting, weatherizing windows and doors,
  and installing Energy-Star appliances.

  Educating the Community

  Creating a greener school requires the education of your community about the importance
   of reducing carbon emissions and living more environmentally sustainable lives.
   First, inform yourself about what other schools are doing to become greener .
  For example, Riverdale Country Day School in New York City has installed a synthetic
  playing field composed of cork and coconut fiber that saves millions of gallons of water per year.
   Other schools offer classes in living environmentally conscious lives, and their lunchrooms offer
  local produce that is shipped smaller distances and that therefore reduces energy use. Students may
  be more motivated to make their school greener when they are aware of what similar schools are doing.
  Find a way to communicate regularly to your school about what you are doing to reduce energy
  use through newsletters or a page on your school's website. Get people involved in taking and
  meeting the goals of the Green Schools Alliance to reduce carbon emissions over five years. Over 1,900
  schools, public and private, around the world have joined the Green Schools Alliance and pledged to
  reduce energy usage, and your school can become one of them.
  
  
  
   Grossberg, B. 2014. How to Make Your School Green. [online] Available at: http://privateschool.about.com/od/schoollife/a/Green-Your-School.htm [Accessed: 2 Apr 2014].
  
  
  Making a school Green is not only about the environment but is also cost saving for schools. Helping the environment is not only for educating individuals its about fighting for future generations to ensure they are able to have what we have when younger. Its not only about safety within our environment but looking after the wildlife within our environment. Everything interconnects it is a system where one thing affects another thing and without one thing the chain weakens or breaks dismantling and disabling a working system and making it break down and unusable.
  
  This article shows the different steps parents can take in implementing sustainable initiatives in the home environment and making it a part of their children's lives. Also parents can help in promoting schools to start such initiatives and to put funds towards these initiatives. Communication between parents can help in getting children to school and working together to reduce C02 emissions.
  
  Schools can reduce energy uses and create an awareness how these uses can use energy and be costly for both school and home environment. Through educating students on the matter you can later educate the communities and uniting together to fight for our environment. Introducing programmes that will benefit the schools, homes and environment.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Environmentally friendly schools

Tips to help make schools more environmentally friendly

By Jennifer Davies

San Diego Union-Tribune Staff Writer
Link to original article

2:00 a.m. July 11, 2009

In school, the three R's no longer refer just to reading, writing and arithmetic. Increasingly, it is also applies to reduce, reuse and recycle as many schools and colleges are looking for new ways to be more green. Interested in helping your kids' school become more environmentally friendly? Check out these tips from Deborah Moore, founder and executive director of the Bay Area-based Green Schools Initiative:

Create a Green Team: This team should involve everyone from the principal to the custodial staff to teachers to other parents and, most importantly, the students themselves. Come up with a vision statement, create goals and an action plan. You'll need to conduct an audit of the school to see what can and needs to be changed. Make sure to incorporate green practices into the school's curriculum, too.

Moore says there a variety of simple ways to green up a school, including:

Recycling

Create a sustainable recycling program. You need to make sure you have the right bins and the right signage and have negotiated for proper pickup with the school's waste hauler. Moore says working with the custodial staff is key, as is engaging and educating the kids.

The biggest sources of waste for schools are paper and food. Ask teachers to change the margins on their printouts to .75 as that could save reams of paper. Also, make sure the default setting is double-sided on all copiers. When it comes to food, try starting a composting program and use the compost for a school garden.

Energy

Ask SDG&E for an energy audit to see how the school can reduce usage. Beyond turning off lights, make sure devices like printers and fax machines are turned off. Use power strips where possible because electronic devices can still suck up power even when turned off.

Use a combo devices like a scanner/fax/printer so you only have to power one device and not three. Switch out light bulbs to more energy efficient compact fluorescent lights. See if your school can turn the thermostat up or down a degree or two to save energy.

Indoor air quality

See if you can get your school to switch to cleaning supplies that are Green Seal certified. Sometimes those decisions are made at the district level, so you might need to direct your lobby efforts there. You can also donate green cleaners directly to your child's teacher.

For more information and tips, check out greenschools.net/.

– JENNIFER DAVIES

Greenschools.net. 2009. Green Schools Initiative : Tips for Environmentally Friendly Schools from the San Diego Tribune. [online] Available at: http://www.greenschools.net/article.php?id=212 [Accessed: 2 Apr 2014].

This article addresses three easy steps towards making schools environmentally friendly. These are three steps towards developing and growing sustainable initiatives. In the beginning to start the programs takes time and money but once it is up and running it can only benefit the school and students. The green initiative is a huge step and should be done by each individual school. 

Being Greener at School

There are many environmentally-friendly things you can do at school or college to help protect the planet and prevent climate change. These include setting up recycling schemes and finding greener ways to travel to and from school.

Going green

Climate change and pollution are issues that affect us all. It's up to everyone to do as much as they can to help the environment.

There are solutions that can help, but everyone needs to get involved if we are going to make them work.

School

As well as doing your bit at home, you and your mates can also do some things at school that can help.

Getting to school

If you usually get driven to school, you could find out if there is another way to get there.

You could use public transport or take a school bus. Because they can carry lots of people, taking a bus or a train reduces the amount of CO₂ released into the air.

If you live close to your school, why not walk or cycle? As well as being better for the environment, it's a great way of getting some exercise.

If using a car is the only way you can get to and from school, find out if you and your friends could set up a car sharing scheme. Instead of travelling in separate cars, you could all get to school in the same one instead.

• Walking to work or school (travel, transport and roads section)

In the classroom

On average, each person in the UK gets through 200 kilograms of paper every year. If you can, try and use both sides of a piece of paper before you throw it away. It's also a good idea to make sure that you are using recycled paper too.

If you're in an IT class or the computer room doing some research, think before you print something out. Do you really need a paper copy of what you're looking at?

You can also recycle or refill printer cartridges. Talk to a teacher and make sure that your school is not just putting them in the bin when they run out.

• Start recycling at school (Recycle Now website)

Food and drink

Whether you eat a packed lunch from home or buy something from school, it's surprising what you can do at lunchtime to help the environment. For example:

• if your school doesn't have any recycling bins in the dining hall or canteen, talk to your headteacher to see if you can get some
• if you drink water from plastic bottles, keep and refill them instead of throwing them away
• find out whether your school could turn their food waste into compost instead of just putting it in the bin  

Taking the lead

If you want to make sure your school is doing all it can for the environment, make a list of changes you’d like to see.

A teacher can help you introduce your ideas into school, like the eco-schools programme or walking to school.

• The Eco-Schools Programme (Eco-Schools Northern Ireland website)

Nidirect.gov.uk. 2014. Being greener at school | nidirect. [online] Available at: http://www.nidirect.gov.uk/being-greener-at-school [Accessed: 2 Apr 2014].

By looking at different articles you are able to see and use all different techniques in being able to achieve the goal in which you are wanting to achieve. By students initiating the programs it ensure the teachers and parents that the students are aware of the problem and want to help in fixing and contributing to fixing and helping the problem. With looking at different opinions you are able to institute a variety of initiatives to achieve a common goal.