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Good Morning. 2015 will see the end of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which were launched in the year 2000 as a series of eight targets. One of those aims was to achieve universal primary education by this year. The goal was laudable because education is the best anti-poverty strategy around. In low-income countries, average earnings increase by 11% with each additional year of education, and each extra year of maternal education reduces childhood mortality by 8%. But despite the efforts of the MDGs over the last fifteen years, today, 58 million children don’t go to primary school and a further 100 million don’t complete. At this year’s UN General Assembly in New York this September, world leaders will gather to launch a new fifteen-year development plan to replace the MDGs. That plan will set out a series of commitments to be known as the Sustainable Development Goals, which will take us up to 2030. But if the MDGs haven’t been achieved why is the UN now setting out on another fifteen-year plan? Some might see the new Goals as pointless. But such a defeatist approach would be wrong for a number of reasons. For a start success was achieved in some of the MDGs. The numbers living in extreme poverty has gone down by 50%; and the rate of childhood mortality has also reduced by a similar percentage. But perhaps the most powerful reason to continue, is that hope must prevail over nihilism. Those 58 million children also deserve a chance. As it says in Hebrews, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. But why or how will these latest set of Goals be different from those of the last fifteen years? For a start there is a much broader consultation taking place. This is crucial, as development to be successful has to be organic and local. That consultation is now involving faith groups who are significant providers of education, and often in the most difficult of places where the state does not have the capacity or the willingness to support an extensive public network. The Catholic Church alone provides some twelve million-school places in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Anglican Communion also has an extensive schools infrastructure. For the SDGs to succeed they must continue to embrace a pluralist approach, which builds a coalition and partners with faith groups and civil society. The SDGs must involve those who are at the coal-face doing the most challenging work and in the most fragile regions. If these latest global plans work then our generation will be able to achieve universal primary education and as Martin Luther reminds us, ‘Everything that is done in the world, is done by hope’.