• Britain and Australia are working together to raise the living standards of the world's poorest
• This is an open letter from High Commissioner Helen Liddell to coincide with the High Level Event on the Millennium Development Goals at the UN on September 25th 2008

The developed world is worried by the financial turmoil. The biggest worry for the developing world is more immediate – survival.

Confronting global poverty is one of the biggest challenges we face and we need to do better.

World leaders gathered at the start of the millennium to make a promise, to do everything in our power to halve extreme poverty. We agreed eight Millennium Development Goals for getting more children into school, improving health care, cutting maternal and child deaths, combating major diseases and tackling environmental decay.

Huge progress has been made. Another 41 million children are now in school, 3 million more children make it into adulthood every year and 2 million more people are being treated for AIDS.

But half way to 2015, we are off track. Too many children still die before their 5th birthday. Too many women still die from complications of pregnancy or childbirth. Every day more than 6-thousand people are infected with HIV.

At the United Nations in New York later this week, world leaders have the chance to strengthen resolve on meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

I welcome Kevin Rudd’s commitment to lift Australia’s aid to 0.5 per cent of gross national income by 2015. But we will not succeed if we assume the Millennium Development Goals are something only ‘governments do’. This is a collective endeavour. Let’s galvanise the energies of the private sector, cities, campaign organisations, faith groups – all of us committed to raising prosperity for what the UN Secretary General has called the bottom billion.

Looking at each area of development indicates how far we have come, and how far we need to go:

Take education. The Australian Government is doing great work in Indonesia, for example, to give all girls and boys access to nine years of education by 2010. In partnership with the Indonesian Government, Australia is helping to build or expand 2,000 schools. There are books too and training for staff. A third of a million Indonesian children will benefit.

At the same time, the UK will spend $2 billion a year on education in developing countries. These are great achievements but the world can do better. Every child has the right to learn and education is the best investment we can make in the developing world. School leavers with a quality education will attract investors, increase economic growth and cut youth unemployment.

Child mortality is a crucial issue. Every year almost ten million children die needlessly. Australia and Britain are committed to doing better. Australia’s polio program in the Philippines is getting good results while Britain has delivered nearly five million mosquito nets to Malawi, giving protection to more than half the children who live there.

In South Asia, figures for maternal and child health are among the worst in the world. That’s why Australia and Britain are committed to improving neonatal care in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal.

Providing clean water and basic sanitation is another challenge. One Australian project in India has removed contaminated pipes for 5,000 households while British aid is ridding parasites such as the painful Guinea worm from water supplies in tropical regions.

But there is much more we need to do.

Australia and Britain are global hubs for innovation and creativity. We have the wealth to lift millions from grinding poverty, to give them the opportunity to learn, be healthy and make enough to support their families.  Let’s now demonstrate that we also have the will to make that difference.

This task requires all of us. It needs campaign groups to hold governments to account – just as they did for the Make Poverty History campaign. It needs business to improve supply chains, open up new markets and share new technology. It needs cities to use their buying power to benefit developing nations. And it needs all of us to stand up for a fairer global trading system.

Britain and Australia share more than our heritage; we share values that will help us achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Those values help us to put our own problems in perspective. The meeting in New York on 25th September is a pivotal moment. We must not fail.