Information on Loughborough

Oxfam Campaigners meet Loughborough MP

Posted on 18/06/2008

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Andy Reed, MP for Loughborough, yesterday (17th June 2008) met Oxfam campaigners to discuss their Report: "Credibility Crunch":Food, poverty and climate change.

Oxfam International is a confederation of 13 organizations working with over 3,000 partners in more than 100 countries to find lasting solutions to poverty and injustice. Oxfam was originally founded in England back in 1942 as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief. It was started by a group of Quakers, social activists, and Oxford academics. It is now known as Oxfam Great Britain and is still based in Oxford.

The Loughborough MP stated that he felt ‘tackling poverty and climate change for the poorest in the world is a moral issue of our times’ and that it should ‘not to be sacrificed for short term economic difficulty’.

The Loughborough MP said:

“There is a real concern that current global economic concerns may blow poverty reduction agendas off course. No one has to be poor in 2008. Yet half way to the Millennium Development Goals we are falling behind. Remarkable progress is possible but the G8, and our government need to keep the long term focus on 2015 and not be blown off course by economic winds of downturn.

“Locally too campaigners can still have their voices heard. Tackling poverty and climate change for the poorest in the world is a moral issue of our times and not to be sacrificed for short term economic difficulty. We all play our part in destroying the planet and creating poverty and that is in the bad times as well as the good economic times.”