>> let me put this out on the table for everybody to jump in. from your own experience, your travels, your work, when you look at the world, what do you see? doctor? >> i see a lot of girls who had expectations. they want to have choices, and they are denied those choices. i hope with the work we are all going roundtable, we can offer them choices. >> tom? >> i see a world full of opportunities. interrelated, increasingly

globalized, coming together, breaking down national borders. what is and our interest very often goes far beyond our daily life. it means we have to recognize that our life does not always -- in the courtyard, villages, and cities, but it has an effect on other parts of the world. in sub-saharan africa, people suffering from the effects on wall street two years ago and are still suffering. whenever we think of problems we are trying to resolve, the national problems, but many of the problems go beyond the borders. they are global problems. once we identify a global problem and looking for solutions for it, they have to be cooperative solutions, global solutions, comprehensive solutions, engaging the whole world and making sure that they are really taking all the regions into consideration. >> sharon, let me get you involved. have done a lot of travel.

we were talking a little bit before we sat down. what do you see? >> i see many things. but primarily i see hope. in my travels i meet many women especially who are often without a voice. they have a voice, but their voice is not heard so their needs are not being met. and these are the many women in many communities that are to identify solutions to help themselves and help other women. that is where i get to this point of hope. i see great hope in my travel. >> women are the key. i will talk about that in a little bit. jump in. >> i see people yearning to make a better life for themselves. they are being held back by disease, they are being held back by lack of education. they are being held back by lack of access to energy. if you don't have electricity, if you are cooking meals of an open fire, if you are spending all of your day collecting

firewood, how are you going to school and advance yourself and light? >> i read an article in "but times," and it was the very first paragraph. we digress right from the beginning. what you are just talking about, nearly 3 billion people in the developing world cook their meals on permited indoor stoves fuelled by waste, would, coal, and deng. every year according to the united nations, smoke from these stoves kills 1.9 million people, mostly women and children from long and hard disease and low birth weight. this is your area, right? >> think about that little kid who is strapped on, others back end breeding and that smoke -- on their mother is back and breathing in the smoke and later dies of pneumonia and a mother says it is god's will, but it

was the smoking was breathing. >> tell us what you see and what your experience brings us here to the table. kind of a mini summit we are having here. a little security council. >> thank you very much. i see a world where we are all interconnected, without borders. a where what you do is going to affect your neighbor. in the end we must work together or we will be forced by circumstances to work together. you think of some former farming upstream and cutting the trees, and the water and the rain falls, and the flooding goes down and dooms the people down the hill. we must think that we are in one unit. >> you are looking at it from an environmental -- yes, yes.

salim, you are with this poverty initiative, director. rather than get into numbers right now, we read in the paper here in the united states that people living on $1.25 a day or $2 a day. it paints a picture of what poverty means. >> poverty means different things to different people. sometimes we try to portray poverty in terms of lack of income only. but even if you have the basic income, you may be suffering from poor health. you may not have the kind of education that you need. you may not participate in the decisions that you take. so, poverty is multi dimensional. people see poverty from different purpose practice. but in a more comprehensive way. where there are deprivations in different parts of human life. income is not the sum total. lack of it cannot be -- >> there is potential, hope.

you have another thought you want to jump into. >> i wanted to jump in and make the point that when we talk about the implications of women cooking and a small place where they live and the health implications, there's also the implication of deforestation as they move farther and farther to collect wood. and also the issue of sexual violence as women are out collecting would far from a home or village. >> hold on that note. we will take a little break. ask the folks at home to sit tight. if you can see we have a distinguished -- distinguished panel. sit tight on "this is america." "this is america" is made possible by -- and national education association, the nation's largest advocate for children and public education.

the american federation of teachers, a union of professionals. the league of arab states, representing 350 million people in 22 member countries. the rotondaro family trust. ctc foundation. afo communications. and the american life tv network. >> i think we are talking about hope and talking about opportunities and interconnectedness'. from my work what i also say, a lot of innovations. a lot of resilience. a lot of coverage. >> give me one example of

courage. >> for example, disasters happening all over the place. either in the form of hurricanes or in the form of flood or other kinds of disasters like the earthquake. the coverage is in not only tried to help yourself, but you also try to help your neighbors. sometimes it is the social capital, the community involvement, even before the government and even bored into it -- before international organizations. >> that is the interconnectedness you are talking about. globalization has a dividend in bringing the world together. >> it is. one of the dividends is you have innovative solutions and you also try those solutions in different places. >> i want you all to jump into the conversation. don't wait for me. >> dennis, let me give you another interesting example. the mobile phone, the cellphone, has just swept the developing world. it an amazing leapfrog technology. in some cases delivering better

health services. people -- delivering better crop and affirmations of the book and deliver their crops to market and make a better living. it is an amazing change. always all these technologies can leapfrog each other. energy can be another. >> johnson and johnson just made a huge commitment, $200 million over five years. the goal is to help 125 million people a year. as we ted just said, phone plays a role, doesn't it? >> one of the key elements of our commitment. we have a lot of information that we can share with women through one of our current operating companies, baby center. there are 20 million moms who have access to the internet who can get information about their pregnancy. the next step, though, is what do we do for women in a resource poor settings where they have a

cell phone and not the internet. so, our commitment is to make sure that they have the same -- >> so you can deliver the information on the phone. women who are pregnant, women who are coming up on childbirth. a very important. >> one thing that i would like the american audience to realize is the face of poverty. it is a young girl who is deprived of the possibility to have education, to understand the choices she has in life. she is also not choosing -- to become pregnant and not able to take care of her own children. so anything that we can do to inform her, care for her, reach out to her in a way that is innovative like johnson and johnson is very important. >> let's go back a little bit. if you walked down the street and said united nations millennium development goals. it does not come tripping lay off of the tongue. what are we talking about?

let's get that framed. this goes back to the year 2000, right? what was of that declaration? what was that coming together all about? >> it is multifaceted. it requires deep poverty -- it is very wide. in 2000 the united nations came together and put all of the development agendas into eight classes, eight millenium development. very well described and defined course, which the implementation of which can be measured and monitored. for example, halfing extreme poverty by 2015. exact targets. halfing, or reducing by two- thirds, or reducing by three- fourths, even dared clear goals which can be measured.

this is a great advantage because we can hold all of the stakeholders accountable to the speed and scale of implementation. >> quick question. " was an all going back to 2000? was it countries, governments? who sat down and said we are going to cut a deal? >> the u.n. has been beating power. to bring the whole world together. not only heads of state and government, but interests paired interests get together, different interests, and they talk to each other, listen to each other, and decide what is the overlap of interest. >> it could be corporations, it could be ngo's, what else? >> governments. >> it used to the government. until the united nations came to terms with the preamble saying, not that we the governments of the world, but we the people of the world. it is a much larger connotation.

governments, of course, are still our partners, but they have to be supported by civil society. by academia. by the private sector. a so, this summit taking place this week in new york, 10 years into but implementation, taking stock, how far did we get, what have we learned, what can we apply to the future, how can we scale of, how can we accelerate implementation to take advantage of the last five years. it is a stakeholder summit. >> one of the ways of the u.n. has changed the mode of operation, what we call the global strategies for women and children. the secretary general, convening a group of many different partners. the private sector came to the table. activists from ngo's who are

very passionate have come to the table. many, many groups -- academics. and we at the partnership for women and child health as for the platform to work developing this. gaining strong consensus and was adopted by all of the government at their meeting this month. so, it is a new way of engaging really the people, part of the united nations. and we hope the media will be very much part of the coalition. we thank you for offering that. >> let me just say so everybody at home knows, we are talking about poverty and hunger as one of the goals, of primary education for young people, and gender equality, a great focus on child mortality and maternal health. disease. and that can be hiv. tuberculosis. malaria. the environment.

and also partnerships putting on the table. i wanted to know from you, doctor, sitting over there at the university of nairobi, where did you see the progress being made? let's talk about what progress has been made in some of those areas, and everybody jump in according to what they have seen. just tell us. >> well, various countries have made different progress at different levels. based on where they put their focus on. you see, the men -- main emphasis of the whole millennium agenda, which came as we were entering the year 2000, there was a thought of what exactly can the nations together do significant. that was the issue of poverty, which you highlighted. there was the issue of security. there was the issue of peace and issue of sustained development.

this now was broken down into the the rules which are actionable which my colleague highlighted here. you would think sustain development is the call to measure -- difficult to measure. take the case of kenya, for example. when the current government was enacted at some point, it declared universal primary education for children. before, the children used to have to pay fees and many were not going to school. they just woke up one day, the government, and came up with a policy saying all children to go to school, no fees. already there was a bus of kids. i remember, i was in the country. i could see so many kids walking around during the day. then all of the sudden i did not

see those kids. [applause] don't -- [laughter] this was simply that happened in a number of countries. there are movements. we have not reached there yet. but we are on the path. >> i wanted to get the doctor involved because she and i were talking a little bit about an article that i thought i had here. neither here nor there. education. when there is education involved, that changes the whole picture. >> education is fantastic determinant of many other things in life. one of the things the recent article is referring to is that it has a strong effect on and proving child health. children under 5. in fact, research has shown between 1990 and 2010, it has saved the lives of roughly 4

million children. when you invest in education. and the choices for women -- you invest in saving the lives of those children. >> on progress -- you asked about it. first of all, there has been impressive progress on certain fronts that we should celebrate. east asia reduced its extreme poverty from 60% down to 16% over a period of 15 years. it has to be celebrated. the second point is the progress has been uneven. it has been uneven among regions, between countries. and it has been uneven but in countries within a groups of people of the regions. the third point is sitting in 2010, we know the proven interventions. we know what works. we know what programs that have worked. that scholarship and -- has worked.

you talk about gender equality but there is also women's empowerment. >> women empowerment. yes, thank you. >> we know that if we invest in a girls and women and if we educate girls, you are also having an educated mother. that has an impact on child mortality. that has an impact on maternal mortality. >> the health of the family, the wealth of the family. >> mutually synergistic. >> i would like to come back to that excellent example of getting children to school. it illustrates how easy it is. it takes a political decision. political dedication. it takes some funds because you have to be able to abandon school fees. you have to train some teachers, get the children to school. but you can do this very quickly if you are dedicated. you can make progress very quickly. numerous examples where we have a miserable -- measurable success stories in segments that

they are interconnected. if you can get children to school, you can provide nutritious food. you can also expose them to basic medicine. you increase upward mobility. you have all -- to get to the school, you need sanitation. you need bathrooms. private bathrooms. you have a lot of growth around this education goals. so, you cannot look at one of the goals in a separate way. you have to see them interconnected. you have to look at the synergies that you can create and you have to take the holistic picture. a little bit like a picture on the wall. the more party put and the clearer it becomes. you don't need a master plan. there is nothing that fits all. but so many approaches can contribute. this is what gives us optimism.

>> tell me a little bit about the work of the foundation, the u.n. foundation. who, what, when, where, and why, and the partnership and interconnectedness we are talking about. >> it is remarkable, we have fought with the progress and have not mentioned the remarkable progress in health. all but eradicated polio. >> yes, yes. >> measles intervention has been enormously successful. 80% reduction. it kills many children without treatment. malaria. as you have probably heard, the u.n. foundation has this nothing but net campaign. for $10 you can send a net to a child in a malaria area and protect them and then they can go to school and then they can succeed in their own right. >> can i add another positive? one thing that is quite important is that two of the

deede related to child mortality, that says a reduction of two-thirds between 1919 -- 1990 and 2015. and then reduction of maternal mortality in the paint -- same time span. we have seen a reduction of one third -- children, and women during pregnancy and childbirth. this is now between 1990 and 2010. a lot of open progress but also we know there is a lot more to do in order to achieve those goals. >> i would just like to chip in what was done. the fight has been funded from so-called global funds, which has been a great success. >> yes, yes. >> the two other health related entities -- maternal health and child health -- have not been funded by this fund and you see

a huge difference in success stories. maternal health, which would be a winner because it is very well described. the results are abysmal. shaming. in sub-saharan africa today, more than 50% of the women give birth without any help. that means one out of 22 women dies giving birth or through pregnancy complications. as opposed to 7300 to one in the north. this is what is being done in the summit, an event tomorrow the secretary-general is convening to draw the attention of the plight of the women in developing countries, especially in sub-saharan africa which, where we can achieve success very quickly. we have to link this problem either to the global fund or

have another -- other funds to provide money to implement the strategy to achieve the success which is possible. >> this ties very closely to the point about education. there is the part of this story that says, there needs to be more skilled berth attendants to be what the women and then there is a part of the story that says culturally i needed to want someone to be with me, or i need to go to a clinic or hospital which culturally may not be part of my mind set. >> we ran into that we were traveling in the middle east this spring. the doctor and i were talking a little bit about. the woman says cancer and says that is my faith, instead of previously seeking out regular doctors or treatment once the diagnosis has been made. i just wanted to mention several ban ki-moon -- secretary ban ki-

moon says the goals are everybody's business. not just the government. but everybody listening to the program -- he also says, you hear about human rights. that is a phrase that sticks and everybody's minds. he called them human needs. human needs and basic rights that people around the world have a right to these things. and it is up to the haves to take care of the have nots. there is an obligation, responsibility. >> and has been anchored in human rights -- poverty is a denial of human rights. lots of things we see our basic human rights. therefore human-rights is linked to human development. >> for online video of all of thisisamerica.net" programs, visit our website, thisisamerica.net.

"this is america" is made possible by -- the national education association, the nation's largest advocate for children and public education. the american federation of teachers, a union of professionals. the league of arab states, representing 350 million people in the 22 member countries. the rotondaro family trust. ct foundationc, afo communications, and at the american life tv network. american life tv network.