OneWorld.net (U.S.)

When the largest gathering of world leaders convened at the Millennium Summit in 2000, they committed their nations to a global partnership to reduce poverty worldwide. The resulting Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the world's "time bound and quantified targets" for addressing eight core issues related to helping the world's poor.

© Heifer InternationalWhen most people consider the Millennium Development Goals, they think of eight separate and distinct needs that the world must address to ensure social justice and economic prosperity. But all the issues are inherently intertwined. Education (Goal 2) and women's rights (Goal 3), for example, are essential for the future elimination of poverty (Goal 1). A healthier environment (Goal 7) would help improve child survival rates (Goal 4). And in recent years, efforts to stop and begin to reverse the spread of AIDS (Goal 6) have become linked to efforts to achieve all the other goals.

Medical and public health professionals are no longer the only ones fighting AIDS. Methods to directly address the pandemic include educating the public, providing anti-retroviral drugs, and maintaining continuous research. But as the half-way point to the MDGs' deadline passes, dealing with the pandemic now involves much more than medicine and education. Aid workers addressing HIV and AIDS have found it necessary to become more specialized in other aspects of development. And those working to solve other development problems find themselves increasingly dealing with the disease.

For example, researchers have found that exposure to HIV/AIDS is having a substantial impact on maternal health (Goal 5), according to the online health care journal MedScape. Suppressed immune systems make women more susceptible to complications in pregnancy and childbirth. In one Ugandan study, HIV-positive women were found to die from maternal complications three times as often as women without HIV.

And so, organizations working on maternal health concerns find themselves confronting the disease regularly. This growing intersection of interests, it turns out, can be mutually beneficial.

© Nyaka AIDS Orphans SchoolAn excellent example of this can be found in the small village of Nyakagyezi in southwestern Uganda. There the Nyaka AIDS Orphans School, established by an American couple, addresses almost all of the MDGs for its population of children who have lost parents to the disease -- offering vocational training to help combat poverty (Goal 1), seeds to promote good nutrition (Goal 1), basic health care lessons (Goals 4 and 5), AIDS education (Goal 6), and clean water (Goal 7) in addition to its daily school lessons (Goal 2).

And, the work of Twesigye Jackson Kaguri and his wife Beronda, who founded the school in 2003, is not just about helping the orphans. They are also serving the entire village.

Women there, like almost all women in the developing world, must walk miles everyday to get clean water. But these days the women of Nyakagyezi simply go to the tap in front of their house, thanks to the Clean Water Gravity system the school built with funds from individuals and the Rockefeller Foundation.

© Nyaka AIDS Orphans SchoolThis system not only provides the school with clean, safe drinking water (which is imperative for the sensitive immune systems of those living with HIV and AIDS), it also provides this water to two other schools, two churches, and more than 120 households in the community. Close to 10,000 people now have access to clean, safe drinking water. And, earlier this year the school secured funding to further expand the system.

Other critical issues addressed by the MDGs are solved at Nyaka. Microfinance loans spur income generation activities to help alleviate poverty for those who take up the burden of caring for the community's AIDS orphans. Vocational training provides employable skills to the community while ensuring the school's sustainability. Health and nutrition plans originally intended for the school children are also benefiting the entire village with a community gardens program. And community AIDS education and outreach programs extend beyond the walls of the school and reach the entire village.

The Nyaka AIDS Orphans School, like many other AIDS-related support programs throughout the developing world, is today helping to accomplish all the goals, for all people.

Laurie Moy is a student in American University's International Media program.

© Academy for Educational Development