Since 2005, a Religious Leaders' Summit has met in conjunction with G8 meetings to offer a faith perspective to the leaders of the world's most powerful countries. In 2010, the G8 will be meeting in Canada, which provides The Salvation Army with a unique opportunity to participate in the discussions. The Salvation Army is an active member of the Canadian Council of Churches, the organizing body for the Summit.

Millennium Development Goals
In 2000, the international community pledged to “spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty.” The commitment to making a difference led to setting eight goals with a target date of 2015 under the heading of the Millennium Development Goals.

At the halfway point, the prospect of successfully achieving the Millennium Development Goals has been thrown into doubt by the global economic crisis, food security issues, the impact of global warming and the lack of commitment from developed countries to make the necessary increases to foreign-aid funding.

The challenges are significant but the impact of the Millennium Development Goals is equally significant. In projects funded by the Canada and Bermuda Territory, such as the South Asia tsunami and integrated well projects in Africa, we address one or more of the eight goals and support the overall intention to alleviate poverty and improve the health and livelihood of vulnerable people.

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
- 1.4 billion people continue to live on $1 a day
- The number of people living in absolute poverty is expected to increase to 100 million
- Conflict only adds to poverty with 42 million people displaced by conflict or persecution inside and outside of the borders of their countries

Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
- While there has been some success to celebrate in terms of achieving this goal, there are still 38 million primary-school-age children in Africa unable to attend school
- In South Asia, the enrolment ratio climbed to 90 percent, yet 18 million are still not in school

Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
- What might be the contributing factors that keep girls, more than boys, from attending school?
- Various factors make it more difficult for girls to consistently attend school, including drought, food shortages, armed conflict, poverty, lack of birth registration, child labour and HIV/AIDS

Goal 4: Reduce child mortality
- The good news is that in 2006, the number of annual deaths of children under five dropped below 10 million
- A child born in a developing country is over 13 times more likely to die within the first five years than in an industrialized country
- The four leading causes of death are pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria and measles

Goal 5: Improve maternal health
- Skilled health-care workers could save the lives of more than 500,000 women who die during pregnancy, childbirth and the first six weeks following delivery

Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
- There is a growing need to support the increasing number of children orphaned by AIDS
- In 2006, there were an estimated 1.7 million deaths due to tuberculosis

Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
- 2.8 billion people live with some form of water scarcity
- 2.5 billion people lack adequate sanitation

Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development
- One of the targets of this goal is to make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications
- 18 percent of the world was connected to the Internet at the end of 2006, 2.7 billion of the world's population were mobile phone subscribers