Independent review

	THE GUARDIAN

Eight ways to change the world

A photography exhibition on the Millennium Development Goals by Panos Pictures, in association with ActionAid, Concern Worldwide, Interact Worldwide, Panos Institute, Plan International, VSO and WaterAid

Adrian Evans, director of Panos Pictures
Wednesday September 7, 2005

We know what happens in the world's poorest countries every year, every day and every minute: every year 11 million children die from curable diseases; every day 800 million people go hungry; every minute six people die from Aids.

But this is all happening far away, not to the people next door. It isn't that we don't care: if our neighbours were dying of hunger, we would do something about it. What can we do?

In 2000, leaders from the 189 countries in the UN promised to deliver eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015. These goals - to end extreme poverty and hunger, reverse the spread of HIV/Aids and malaria, and to give all children an education - are ambitious. But they are simple and achievable.

Let us keep poverty and development at the top of the political agenda so that rich countries will fulfil their promise to increase aid, cancel debt and make trade fair. We must keep them to their promise.

That is why Panos Pictures has invited its award-winning, internationally recognised and highly committed photographers to bring the Millennium Development Goals to life.

Each photographer, sponsored by a leading development agency, has produced a set of poignant photographs from the developing world, along with a personal testimony about what the experience meant to him or her.

Only world leaders can deliver aid, cancel debt and make trade fair. But it is ordinary citizens who have brought them to the negotiating table, by standing up and demanding justice.

We want to show that where you happen to be born can determine how long you will live, and whether you will have a home and a job or spend your whole life searching for water and food.

Extreme poverty deprives people of everything we take for granted: their health, an education, their hopes and dreams.

As part of this exhibition, and in the spirit of the eighth and final Millennium Development Goal, we invite everyone to do one thing. Every act of witness, every individual pledge each of us makes, will create a ripple that will form an unstoppable tide.

Together we can change the world.