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Intro

Welcome to the Bristol Make Poverty History web site.

Every single day, 30,000 people die as a result of extreme poverty. That’s one every 3 seconds – a Tsunami every 10 days.

Yet this poverty is preventable. It’s all down to political will.

World leaders already know about the problems, and they’ve already made concrete promises to sort them out. They’re called the Millennium Development Goals (the MDGs). These are 8 specific targets, and one of them is to halve global poverty by 2015.

But these millennium goals are way behind schedule. Meanwhile 30,000 people continue to die every day. They can’t afford delays.

The leaders of 8 rich country governments have the power to get these goals back on track, to end this preventable poverty. They're known as the G8. The UK is one of them.

In July this year, the G8 met in Scotland. And 225,000 Make Poverty History campaigners came to Edinburgh days before they met, demanding justice for the world's poorest people.

In the end the G8 chose not to do all that MPH campaigners wanted. But they did take important steps. In the communique they issued at the end of the summit, there were positive announcements on debt cancellation, increased aid, and HIV/AIDS - but little progress on reform of unjust trade rules or climate change.

So if real change is to be made this year, the G8 must go a lot further by working with other world leaders at upcoming international meetings. But they’ll only do that if enough people tell them to.

And that’s where you come in. Please join us in Bristol and millions around the world. Tell the G8 to make poverty history in 2005!