Strategy
Tackling poverty south and north!
Micah Challenge is widely acknowledged because it is building the political will needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, by mobilizing constituencies that could tip the political balance in key countries.
The Millennium Development Goals are a compact between high income countries and the international financial institutions (termed the 'global north'), and low income countries (termed the 'global south'). Southern leaders have promised to deliver all dimensions of good governance required to achieve the targets for hunger and absolute poverty, primary education, infant and maternal health, gender inequality, HIV/AIDs and other diseases, and environmental sustainability (Goals 1-7). Northern leaders have promised to deliver finance for development, a fairer trade regime and technology transfer (Goal 8).
It is widely agreed that the MDGs are a 'stretching', but economically and technically achievable roadmap to halve poverty by 2015. They have become the backbone for national poverty reduction plans, and for bilateral and multilateral aid and development negotiations. At halftime in 2007, there has been substantial overall progress, but progress lags in many of the poorest countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.
Political will is built by active citizenship. Micah Challenge is turning heads because it is engaging Christians in active citizenship on both sides of this south-north equation. At July 2007, Micah Challenge has twenty five campaigns in the global south and fifteen in the global north. The nuts and bolts of their work is, firstly, to challenge the Christian community, from local church to national church leadership, to be transformed by the Word of God and by deeper engagement with impoverished and marginalized communities, and secondly to adopt the Millennium Development Goals as a lens, and as a lever, for critical engagement with the political and business leadership of their country.
Is this strategy working?
The cases below illustrate the capacity and enormous potential of churches to mobilize citizens and create the conditions in which governments will be more accountable and will use economic growth to reduce poverty. They indicate massive returns on investment at three levels: increased resource flows from the global north to the global south; better governance indicated by delivery of effective services to the poorest communities, and: increases in the numbers of children, women and men living fuller and more secure lives.
Ghana
Ghana’s economy in the last 10 years had become one of the strongest performing African economies. The rate of extreme poverty (less than $1 per day) has effectively gone from 51.7 percent in 1990 to 33.4 percent in 2005. According to World Bank projections Ghana will cut extreme poverty in half by 2015!
A radical change in the culture of democracy and governance in Ghana has meant that the fruits of economic growth have been shared by impoverished and marginalized people. The Christian Council of Ghana played a critical role by using the pervasiveness of the church network to educate and empower citizens, monitor elections and mediate between leaders.
Micah Challenge Zambia
In 2006, local churches organized by the Jubilee Centre (leading Micah Challenge) in the copper-belt region of Zambia engaged their, normally absent, parliamentarians in workshops on HIV/AIDs. Within three weeks, as a direct result of this practical, prayerful approach to advocacy, availability of anti-retroviral treatment in the district of Mwinulunga rose by 43%! In a second church-led strategy, communities across the copper-belt region got pre-poll contracts from candidates before the recent national elections that will help to guarantee that election promises to achieve the MDGs in the region will be delivered.
Micah Challenge Malawi
The global Stand-Up Against Poverty organized by the UN Millennium Campaign in 2006, to promote the MDGs and continue pressure on governments to meet the targets, was the second largest social action in history, involving 23 million people, just short of the 24 million who signed the Jubilee Debt Campaign petition. For Stand-Up, as for the Jubilee Debt petition, church networks played a enormous part in mobilizing participation. The Africa MDG News recorded that, "The Malawi Campaign worked in conjunction with Micah Challenge and organized Stand Up Moments in churches and schools that produced 1,500,027 people standing against poverty."
Micah Challenge Australia
Micah Challenge Australia's mobilization of churches in the constituencies of influential Christian members of Government, underpinned the Government's decision in 2005 to increase annual overseas aid by 1.5 billion Australian dollars by 2010. Subsequent lobbying by Micah Challenge has also played a part in getting the opposition party to promise ahead of elections in 2007, that it will lift overseas aid to 5% of GDP. One of Micah Challenge's contributions to the broader Make Poverty History campaign in Australia is that it engages more middle and conservative voters than other organizations within the movement. The views of these communities can be less easily dismissed by the political parties. Micah Challenge worldwide is part of the white band movement (Global Call to Action Against Poverty) and contributes globally in a similar way.
Micah Challenge USA
Engagement of evangelical Christian leaders in the USA in lobbying before the World Summit in 2005 contributed to an about turn in the negative stance the Administration had originally taken towards the Summit and the MDGs. The President made his first public statement of commitment to the MDGs giving campaigners a much better platform for lobbying. Micah Challenge USA has continued work to engage influential evangelical Christian leaders. MCUSA will co-host a US-global south forum on October 11-12, 2007 in Washington, featuring dialogue between Christian in leaders and the UN Secretary General.
Micah Challenge's overall strategy has two primary dynamics, as shown in the diagram below.
- The horizontal dynamic, the primary strategy for achieving Aim 1, is to bring rich and poor within the Body of Christ into mutually transforming relationship.
- The vertical dynamic, the primary strategy for achieving Aim 2, is to biblically motivate and empower Christians to use the levers of democracy to influence the governments of their own countries (i.e. as 'constituents') to implement policies and budgets that will achieve the MDGs.
These two aims provide framework for Christian's to be involved in active citizenship, aimed at having an impact on their national leadership using the Millennium Development Goals as a lever and a lens. The dynamic of the north/south partnership is illustrated by the diagram below.
