To the dear people I have come to know and care for!
Happiest New Year. 2020, a new day, a new year, a new decade even. It brings with it so many promises and possibilities.
When I was living in Ghana twenty years ago, our organization was working hard to meet the U.N.’s 2020 targets to reduce poverty, inequity among women, and preventable diseases such as polio and malaria. The goal was to improve the quality of life of every person by providing universal access to clean water, proper healthcare, sanitation, education and fair and just governance.
In researching and reflecting upon how far the world has come since 2000, we have much to be thankful for. Earnest and honest efforts have made significant changes to improve the lives of millions around the world. https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-in-5-charts?linkId=62571595.
We also know that in the next decade, much more can be done to improve the conditions of today. Major problems still exist in the world from tackling climate change, to confronting a resurgence of resistant diseases and continuing threats of war and nuclear weapons proliferation. This involves a whole new generation of kids maturing and learning how to make a difference in what is now a very different world from the one at the turn of the 21st century.
I want to make an appeal that starting today, we all create a vision for where these changes for you, for others and for our shared world can be made. It is a year of vision, of clarity, of crispness, of perspective. It’s 2020.
Today is here, I am so happy to share it with you.
Always, Maria
