by Arne Post Uiterweer

13 May 2009

La Paz, Bolivia: A burning sun on a very hot morning in avenue ‘16 de Julio’, La Paz, Bolivia. It is the month of November, at one of the last Sunday fairs organized on this spot.

“If we lose all our trees, we are going to get burned!” one can hear from below one of the yellow tents. “The shoeshine boys don’t go to school,” writes a young girl next to a drawing of a school and a hospital with a lot of red and a shining blue sky.

The voices of the little kids are not referring to what they see in El Prado, although they could, as there are a lot of shoeshine boys wandering around. The children are participating in the First Drawing Competition for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The competition is for children between the ages of four and twelve, and is organized by the United Nations joint programme ‘Contigo Avanzar II’ and by the youth newspaper Goyi.

The MDGs are very serious objectives; however, they are raised within a political context. Different audiences may need new explanations or approaches to be able to understand.

The biggest challenge is possibly making children aware of them. After all, it is their future we are talking about. Besides, they are the ones who will be able to make a difference.

The Drawing Competition for the MDGs is one of those initiatives that tries to build a bridge, connecting complex universal problems to the imaginative world of children. The idea is based on raising awareness for the MDGs in an easy, accessible and creative way and at the same time informing parents about the MDGs in a more serious way.

During two Sundays in November, 115 children made an effort to express their commitment to the Millennium Development Goals. Every one of them got a prize. The testimony of their creative messages could be found during four days in an exhibition of all the drawings in the Municipal Library of La Paz.

Some of the MDGs are difficult to explain to little kids. However, some are easily incorporated into children’s drawings.

The smoke of cars and factories make the world dirty. There is less and less green, less parks and gardens where children can play and breathe fresh air. These conclusions inspire the little children because they are part of their daily reality. Their city is packed with traffic, and not a single day goes by without a huge cloud of smoke being blown into their faces from one of the thousands of cars.

When you tell them that there are a lot of children in the world unable to go to school, and many who need to walk for hours to be able to visit a doctor, their faces show compassion and disapproval. There are a lot of kids who draw large hospitals and schools so that all children can fit in.

Others express the global environmental problem with lots of cars expelling large quantities of dirty smoke, with a sad-faced sun above, right next to scenery full of beautiful flowers, trees and blue rivers below a smiling sun. Goals 1, 2, 4 and 7 (eradicate poverty, universal education, reduce child mortality, environmental sustainability) are the goals most commonly featured in the little works of art.

The winner of the competition, a four-year-old-girl, was able to express Millennium MDG8 (‘a global partnership for development’), even though this Goal had not been explained to her. What would have happened if this little girl had been present at the United Nations Millennium Summit?

We must take the messages transmitted by these little children seriously. When talking about the Millennium Development Goals, we are mainly talking about their future.

Their creative messages show beautiful simplicity and an incredible expressional force. These are things which are sometimes hard to find in the political context of the need to fulfil the Millennium Goals.

However, when looking at the drawing of a child, one understands that there is nothing that can better express the need for a better world. These children are expressing the basis for our future development, while at the same they themselves represent our future. We must not forget our youngest ambassadors for the MDGs.