At the Millennium Summit in 2000, world leaders committed their nations to address extreme poverty in its many dimensions - income poverty, hunger, disease, lack of adequate shelter, and exclusion - while promoting gender equality, education, and environmental sustainability. They underscored that the MDGs are also about basic human rights - the rights of each person on the planet to health, education, shelter, and security. A meeting of the Anglican Primates in 2001 joined this initiative by asking Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, Metropolitan of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, to find ways of moving the Anglican Communion forward by addressing the vital social issues of poverty, trade, debt, HIV and AIDS. The TEAM Conference is to be a major step in achieving that result.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams has said: “International Development is not something that stands isolated from mission, but is integral to it.…[A]s Primates we committed ourselves through the Dromantine meeting [in Northern Ireland] in 2005 to playing our part in encouraging leaders of the nations to meet the Millennium Development Goals.” Williams said. “How we prepare for the [TEAM] Conference and make our various contributions to it will be of great importance in the coming months.”

In September 2005, there was a Consultation on Religious Leaders on Global Poverty including Canon Kenneth Kearon, the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion and Archbishop Ndungane, which said: “we support the goal of ‘global partnership for development’ and believe that the churches can make a unique contribution to that partnership”. The sort of thing that they thought churches could do was to develop new models for advancing a global movement against poverty, and use of the vast network of churches and church institutions to work with local communities.

The role of the MDGs was also a topic of the CUAC December 2006 Trustees Meeting, which included a discussion with the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, the new Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church. She thought that there must be very practical ways in which colleges and universities could team up with similar institutions around the Communion, and work together at projects which could actually implement the MDGs. Practical examples emerged such as faculties of education addressing illiteracy, or business faculties addressing local economic development. The International Partnership for Service Learning and Leadership, CUAC’s partner, is also interested in using its’ network to promote student programs exploring the MDGs.

At the January ’07 meeting of the American Chapter of CUAC (The Association of Episcopal Colleges), a paper was given by Hellen Wangusa, the new Anglican United Nations Observer from Uganda on “the UN and World Perspective of the MDGs”. In her summary, she made the acute observation that the MDGs are not so much about poverty, as about wealth and wealth distribution. There is more than enough resource on this earth to sustain its population, but the issue is how is it shared. “Therefore if one part of the body is hungry, then the whole body is hungry. In terms of mission then we see this goal as asking us to respond to that part of the body that is hungry. In the same vein we ought to ask orselves if a half a response is good enough. We must and can transcend this”.

Wangusa suggested possible projects:

· using MDGs to develop literacy, advocacy, economic and literacy manuals and materials.

· developing gender guidelines for projects of the MDGs.

· theological reflections and Biblical bases for engaging and implementing the MDGs.

· exchange/exposure learning and sharing of experiences of the MDGs.

· research on alternatives to poverty: wealth redistributive methods.

· direct projects--nutrition projects, sponsorship of girl children; library support for schools; sexuality/health education for the eradication of HIV/AIDS and malaria

Don Thompson, General Secretary for CUAC is to attend the TEAM Conference in March, and expects to come back with many ideas and contacts to share with CUAC institutions as to how to work toward the MDGs throughout the Communion. A page of the CUAC web-site will be devoted to the CUAC MDG programs.