LEWISTON – Before they could aid efforts to fight worldwide poverty, a classroom of Bates College students gathered Friday to join a nationwide link.
Huddled around a conference table and big-screen TV, the 17 local students connected to an Internet videoconference with United Nations delegates in New York and five other colleges.
They watched and listened.
The delegates and U.N. staffers, six in all, talked about efforts to meet the organization’s Millennium Development Goals. The goals package – to cut AIDS cases and extreme poverty in half while boosting basic education by 2015 – is now five years old.
Little progress has been made.
“If achieved by every nation, we’d have a different world,” said a delegate from Kenya, projected as a blurry image on the TV screen.
However, the world’s the same or worse, she said.
A former U.N. worker from the United States said the goals got an inadvertent boost after John Bolton, the United States’ U.N. ambassador, dismissed them. The outcry led President Bush to reaffirm America’s support.
Everyone encouraged the young people connected to the conference – from Virginia, South Carolina, New Mexico, Washington and New York City – to mobilize their campuses behind the effort.
Bates student Jo Anne Villarosa of the Philippines, who organized the local link, said she was heartened by her school’s response. After all, she did it with just one week of planning. More will be scheduled.
The instant video, though fuzzy and glitch-prone, made it more immediate. And the access to delegates would be impossible any other way, she said.
Carolina Caceres, a Bates student from Paraguay, said she valued the link as a way to get “pure” news from the U.N. unfiltered by a reporter.
“We don’t get the background of what’s going on behind the scenes,” said Caceres.
The Bates senior managed to ask one of two questions the school was allotted in the online conversation. She asked about the U.N.’s aid to small countries and whether corruption was a barrier to getting the help to people.
The answer from her home delegate drew nervous laughter.
The Paraguay delegate said corruption needs two parties to work, and that the United States is the worst one around.
“As they say in my home,” the delegate said, “it takes two to tango.”
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