More than a billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty over the past 25 years; education about the issue is critical to continuing the trend.
Interview with Michiel Kolman
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At the Bologna Children’s Book Fair in April, Michiel Kolman, International Publishers Association Presidential Envoy for Diversity & Inclusion in the Publishing Industry, helped to launch the Sustainable Development Goals Book Club with the United Nations and others.
In 2015, the United Nations General Assembly set out a collection of Sustainable Development Goals – known as “SDGs” – for reaching by the year 2030, The list begins with “No Poverty” and includes Gender Equality, Clean Water and Sanitation, and Affordable and Clean Energy. As Kolman tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally, creation of the global children’s book club even supports the SDG of Quality Education.
“You can imagine you’re a young boy in Peru and you can read in Spanish about clean water and sanitation, or you’re a young girl in China and you can read in Chinese about gender equality,” he explains. “Every month we will announce books for the book club around one of the SDGs. We started in April and will finish next year in September, 2020, which is actually the fifth anniversary of the SDGs.”
In 2030, the Earth is expected to be home to 8.5 billion inhabitants – a population rise of more than one billion from 2019. According to World Bank figures, more than a billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty over the past 25 years, and the global poverty rate is now lower than it has ever been in recorded history.
