Poverty Eradication: What’s the role of information?

Today the world celebrates the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty with a theme of “Building a sustainable future: Coming together to end poverty and discrimination”. Thus, the keys are defined: it’s sustainability and collaboration. Where does communication tap in?

Poverty Eradication is the first sustainable development goal, which means ending extreme poverty  for all people everywhere (people living on less than $1.25 a day) by 2030.

According to the World Bank, by the end of this year extreme poverty rate should fall to under 10 per cent of the global population. Yet, this optimistic prediction is based on available data  whereas there are still many blank spots. 10 days after this first release, World Bank stated that there are 29 countries with no poverty data from 2002 to 2011 and 28 countries where only one survey was conducted throughout these years. To add more doubts to positive trends, it appears that 77 countries (thus half of all assessed) have either insufficient or inadequate data.

C4D Efforts

“Achieving all the aims of Agenda 2030 requires partnerships between governments, businesses, civil society, the UN system, and committed individuals and organisations across all walks of life. We all need to work together to mobilise all available resources, adapt global goals to local contexts, and play our respective roles in building an inclusive and sustainable future, free of poverty and discrimination,” says Helen Clark, the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in this year’s International Day for for the Eradication of Poverty official statement.

UNICEF, claiming that storytelling and visual evidence can advocate for children’s rights, dedicated this photo essay with 10 stories of children worldwide who are facing poverty every day. More support for those in difficult life circumstances and Sustainability Agenda could be shown by spreading the word via social media. The World Bank encourages Internet users to change their profile pictures on social media channels or use some prewritten tweets such as:

• To #EndPoverty it’s not just one person’s work, it’s everyone’s work: #Music4Dev guest @mzveegh http://wrld.bg/TpkbQ
• We’ve just 15 yrs to end extreme poverty & boost shared prosperity. Let’s make it happen: http://wrld.bg/Tpr2Z

The question remains though if showing support and boosting activity on social media can assist in collecting reliable data and meeting targets defined in the Goal 1 of Sustainable Development Goals.

Image via Flickr