In the developing world, poverty breeds poverty. It goes far beyond simply the lack of income. It means having to walk more than one mile everyday to collect water and firewood; not having enough to eat; lack of shelter; being sick and not being able to see a doctor; it means suffering diseases that were eradicated from rich countries decades ago. It also includes not being able to go to school and not knowing how to read; not having a job, having fear for the future, living one day at a time. It is powerlessness, lack of representation and freedom.

More than a billion people in the developing world live on less than a dollar a day. They do not have enough money to buy food. Millions go hungry every day, with under-nourishment playing a part in more than half of all child deaths. That is why the first MDG has the twin objective of halving the proportion of people whose income is less than a dollar a day and also halving the proportion of people suffering from hunger by 2015.

What can be done?
Poverty leads to environmental degradation, which in turn leads to poor or no access to basic resources and facilities for better life. This is a vicious cycle, and therefore needs to be addressed holistically. Any intervention for poverty reduction must consider poverty with its many dimensions such as access to basic amenities, resources and facilities for life, income, equity, social inclusion, women's empowerment, and respect for human rights. To achieve the MDG target of halving the people reeling under poverty and those suffering from hunger, developing countries need to adopt bold strategies. The document on 'A Practical Plan to Achieve the MDGs' brought out by the UN Millennium Project, recommends that in order to meet the 2015 deadline, all countries must have poverty reduction strategies in place by 2006 and countries which already have a plan in place must align the same with the MDGs.

Any poverty reduction strategy needs to create an enabling environment for achieving the set targets; which can be created by improving governance, mobilizing domestic resources, identifying public investments necessary to meet the targets, actively engaging civil society in these plans and empowering the poorest of the poor through participation among many other things. It also needs to be kept in mind that rather than strategies to 'accelerate progress towards the Goals', countries need to have strategies to 'achieve the Goals'.

How can Education and Communication help?
One of the core components of any development strategy are Education and Communication about the strategy, its objectives and its components to the various individuals and agencies involved in the process of achieving the goals and targets.

Communication is the means by which participants in the strategy exchange information with each other, reach agreement with each other on actions, undertake action to change or strengthen values and knowledge and inform others about the strategy. Education is an effective way of imparting knowledge and skills. The desired outcome of any 'educational initiative' in a development strategy is an informed citizenry which is prepared to participate responsibly towards a sustainable society.

Let us look at an example, which highlights how the goals contained within MDG 1 are sought to be achieved with the strong focus on education and communications component within the project:

Velugu
‘No family will lack basic needs like food, clothing and shelter and all will enjoy a better quality of life and will be able to lead a comfortable life, filled with opportunities to learn and develop skills and earn a livelihood'.

This is the mission of 'Velugu' (meaning 'light' in Telugu language), a large-scale poverty reduction project being implemented in Andhra Pradesh, India, in partnership with the World Bank. The focus of the project is to address poverty through empowerment of rural poor women, especially the poorest of poor. The project is founded on the principle that sustainable poverty eradication requires the recognition of the poor as active partners in the processes of social change. Therefore all project interventions are demand based and are in response to the proposals conceived and planned by the poor people themselves. The project is being implemented through an extensive network of 860 mandals (groups) spread across 22 districts of Andhra Pradesh, India, reaching out to 29 lakh poorest of the rural poor.

The project facilitates the formation of grassroots level people's organizations at several levels ranging from village-level self-help groups to Village Organizations to Village Federations and mandals (group of federations). It builds capacities of its members (mostly women) to run the federations in a self-managed and self-reliant fashiondeciding their own projectswhich ultimately help them to establish credit mechanisms, generate additional incomes, enhance livelihood opportunities and create access to market spaces. Engagement in this process not only helps poor women overcome their social, economic, cultural and psychological barriers but also instills in them leadership and decision-making skills.

The project exemplifies the characteristics of a good poverty alleviation programme in that it not only addresses the lack of access to basic needs like food, shelter and clothing but rather focuses on EMPOWERMENT of the people involved. The empowerment is sought to be achieved through the direct participation of the members in planning and decision-making processes. Towards realizing the goals of poverty alleviation and self-reliance, education and communication have a significant role to play. Velugu has a strong Communications Programme, which is at the core of Vlugu's success. Let us look at the Communication Strategy deployed in this project.

Velugu Communications Programme
IEC (Information, Education and Communication) activity in the Project has ensured continuous dissemination of information based on implementation experience across the range of stakeholders. Implementation has been coordinated by a professional within the mandal and all workers coming in direct contact with communities are trained to meet IEC needs.

The Communication Strategy has two components: 1) Communication for Behavioral Change and 2) Information & Documentation. Communication for Behavioral Change ensures that beneficiaries are empowered and motivated to participate in their own development. It also prompts an interactive, dialogue mode to effect sustained behavior transformation, leading to positive action.
The objective of the Information Component is to ensure that information flows within the project and between the project and the outside world i.e. intra and external communication with regard to objectives, vision, components, finances, processes, final outcomes and impact of the project.

While both the components have different scopes, the outcomes of each feed into the other. On one hand, information about the project flows to the grassroots facilitating behavioral change. On the other hand, periodic assessment provides feedback into the information infrastructure and monitoring and learning system. These new learning is fed back and operationalized in the project.

What did Communication help in achieving?

• Indicating to the project beneficiaries and the outside world that Andhra Pradesh is serious about poverty alleviation.
• Ensuring participation of beneficiaries and other stakeholders in the process.
• Ensuring timely/quality dissemination of project components to aid timely interventions and last but not the least
• Transforming women's groups into learning organisations.

The Strategy and Tools
The above is being achieved by setting up of Mandal Velugu learning centres and through the use of strategic communication tools like audio, video, print and the website www.velugu.org. The training centres are equipped with a computer, TV, radio and other infrastructure.

The other notable feature of the Communications Strategy is its use of Community Media like Newsletter, Community Radio and Cultural Action Teams which spread awareness and learning through use of alternate mediums such as theatre. Today, 20 women reporters bring out a bi-monthly newsletter called Navodayam (meaning 'new dawn'), a two-women team have been trained under an UNESCO programme to make radio programmes through using local idioms, local voices, artists, situations and images. Each participating district has a team of artists who perform Kalajatha, a popular name for rural theatre in Andhra Pradesh. This group of performers spread variety of messages relating to child labour, health, education, social discrimination, social malpractices, hygiene and sanitation, etc.

Facts

• Today, across the world, 1.3 billion people live on less than one dollar a day. About 60 percent of the people living on less than $1 a day live in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
• Thirty-thousand children die every day due to poverty (UNICEF). This includes 11 million children under five years of age, each year.
• Of the 2.2 billion children in the world, 1 billion are reeling in poverty (every second child). For the 1.9 billion children from the developing world, there are:
• 640 million without adequate shelter (1 in 3)
• 400 million with no access to safe water (1 in 5)
• 270 million with no access to health services (1 in 7)
• The world's 3 richest people have wealth greater than the combined Gross Domestic Product (the value of all goods and services) of the world's 48 poorest nations.
• The world's richest 225 people have combined assets equal to the combined annual income of the world's 2.5 billion poorest people.
• More than 800 million people go hungry every day; of these 300 million are children.
• Of these 300 million children, only eight percent are victims of famine or other emergency situations. More than 90 percent are suffering long-term malnourishment and micro nutrient deficiency.
• Every 3.6 seconds a person dies of starvation and a large majority of these are children under the age of five. More...