how do we turn leadership declarations into accomplishments?

[chris macrae]

Jane Wales: Dr Yunus- because you’re the world’s best problem solver I have ever known , I am going to ask you about some of the things that are in the plate of the next president of the united states. He will come in and he will face poverty including new poverty at home and abroad the employment crisis the need to provide quality education for all the need to provide affordable healthcare post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation if were you advising the new president, would you urge him to take an integrated approach or to deal with each independently? Muhammad Yunus well I can only tell him of my way at looking at it –first of all if he wants to be serious about poverty – after all, the president of US is de facto the president of the world, so what he does impacts the whole world. So when he talka about poverty he provides the leadership that others take. Now we have the millennium goals which are a wonderful set of goals which inspire all the world but were unfortunately derailed by other things that came up so first of all restore total support for the millennium development goals and withdraw from other stuff united states got involved in such as war on terror, so concentrate on the one of making sure we achieve the millennium goals, achieve them 100% this will be a tremendous achievement for the whole world that we have done something its not some of UN goal setting and forgetting, this is a real goal and a realty to celebrate having done it and then for this president the best thing is to show total commitment of ending poverty set a new date when the world can be at zero poverty – we have 2015 at halve poverty so why don't we set the next goal zero poverty so that we know this is the direction we need to take, when we set the date everything else will fall into place: how do you measure, how do you do it there are several things that will play an important part 1 microcredit because it has shown its effectiveness in unleashing the capacity of people 2 technology how to bring technology to the poorest people so that they can change their whole world 3 healthcare so its nothing separated, its integrated but you cant have one organisation doing everything, you need several organisations but focused so that everything is achieving the same goal to lift the person and as the president is declaring the date for zero poverty in the whole world at the same time encourage the united states to set their date when their city be zero poverty when their county gets to zero poverty - if someone says well we have no poverty how do you know if you have poverty or not –its very simple the first question I ask is do you have a welfare program, a welfare department? As long as you have a welfare department you have poverty, otherwise why do you have it, poverty means that nobody is on welfare tat is clear sign so you have to close down your welfare department, find something else for those people to do, so all the related things you have to welfare you close down as you have crossed that level and you are never going back- city by city, county by county, state by state, it can be done and it will encourage everyone else – that state can do it, we can do it this is the way to go, so poverty will be the challenge –and once you have solved poverty other solutions come right away, environment will come right away- like in the case of bangladesh environment and our survival is an integrated problem, we are the ones on the front line – eliminated by global climate change because of our flat country, so for us its such an important issue the united states missed the whole leadership on the global warming issue, never got to the Kyoto protocol and as a result the whole world got derailed, ..so now is the chance to go back to preparing for the 2012 UN binding resolution .. that way you n=know where you are the moment government becomes serious , technology starts going in, its not a question of it cant be done , simply we have to make a serious commitment that we will do it-the moment we make the serious commitment, technologies will come , how do we replace the things that are causing the problem, replacing them with new technology without harming anyone in any way the present way of living life in a way which might enjoy life today but may be harming someone else’s life somewhere on the planet, its not a good feeling: I am doing something that puts someone else life at stake because of the way I do things – so the basic principle we should all adopt, every child should be taught, every family be taught my way of living should not harm anyone else , and that’s how I would like to live its possible once you make that commitment all the environmental problems will be solved

BARACK OBAMA: Clinton Global Collaboration Meeting Webcast Podcast we will set the goal of ending all deaths from malaria by 2015 Thursday 25 sept 2008 -help worldcitizen.tv 301 881 1655 map actions at affiliate http://obamauni.com/ Barack Obama: "Disease stands in the way of progress on so many fronts; it can condemn populations to poverty, prevent a child from getting an education, and yet far too many people still die of preventable illnesses. Today I'd like to focus on just one, malaria. We have eliminated malaria in the United States, but nearly one million people around the world still die from a mosquito bite every year. Eighty-five-percent of the victims are African children under the age of five. In Africa, a child dies from a mosquito bite every 30 seconds, and by the way, this is something I've seem personally. If you go to the village where my father grew up, where my grandmother still lives, the toll of malaria remains throughout the region. And beyond the devastating human toll, malaria weighs down public health systems, setting back global capacity to fight other disease. So today I want to join with the global malaria community that is meeting here in New York to make a new commitment: When I am president, we will set the goal of ending all deaths from malaria by 2015. It's time to rid the world of a disease that doesn't have to take lives. The United States must lead and when I am president we will step up our focus on prevention and treatment around the world to get this done"