Listen to the speech on Make Poverty History (3.9Mb wav)

Most people have enough to eat and somewhere to live, but there are people in the world who don’t have clean water, enough to eat or shelter. Jubilee 2000 campaign was partly successful in its aim to cancel debts of poorer countries so they have more money to spend on health, education and other social projects. The trade justice campaign started in 2001.

2005 is a very important year for campaigning as the first since 1996 when the G8 countries meet in Britain and UK have presidency of EU. This has led to the Make Poverty History Campaign, which is seeking three things: drop the dept, trade justice, more and better aid.

The commitments that have been made on debt relief need to be fulfilled and G8 are now called on to write off all debt. On aid, countries need to give what they promised 30 years ago, targeted at social projects, so as to avoid corruption. The aid should not be tied to goods and services from the donor country.

But these concessions on debt and aid are not enough, we need changes to the rules on trade. What can you do? Firstly get information – eg from Make Poverty History or Oxfam. Secondly buy and wear a Make Poverty History arm-band. Thirdly, come to the rally in Edinburgh on 2nd July.

The greatest call to action is the terrible fact that over 100 children died from avoidable poverty during the brief 5 minutes of the talk.

Glossopdale Furniture Project is a voluntary organisation that accepts donations of unwanted furniture from the public and passes them on to people in receipt of benefit.

The Project is able to accept most items of furniture, so long as they are in good condition. They collect in New Mills on Mondays.