MDG'S: goals or proof of statistic?

     As North Americans, when we hear of issues arising in the field of international aid, our go-to solution, (should we choose to react) is to give more, and donate more, in hopes of making a difference.  Although commendable; the amount of aid given by Canadians to Latin America through government and NGO’s, the pertinent issue is not how much money is being given, but where the money is being distributed upon its donation.  The Millennium Development Goals are a set of goals to be used as guidelines for the social development of lesser-developed countries.  These goals are used to measure success, but also to guide donor countries to where they should target their international aid dollars. Initialized at the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000, one of the MDG’s is to halve the number of people living in absolute poverty (living on less than a dollar a day) by the year 2015. International aid needs to be scrutinized under the public eye in order to ensure it is going towards where it is needed the most.  Using the Millennium Development Goals as a guideline, we should be able to see equal distribution of aid in the realization of every goal—not just the ones that are easiest used to ameliorate statistics.