Five minutes on the train and I'm in the city - here I can do everything I need to do today: buy some medicine for my sick daughter at home, get the cat food from the pet shop and I can also drop off the parcel with the clothes I ordered too small at the post office next door.
If everything goes quickly, I'll even have time to sit down in the café on the market square and drink the world's best latte macchiato before I pop into work to pick up today's post - I can then work on it from the comfort of my own home. That way, I'm at home when my son comes home from school on the bus. I'm glad: the public transport connection to the neighboring village where the school is located has only been in place for a few years. Before that, it was relatively inconvenient to get your children there.
Lei Ni from the Irrawaddy Delta in the rural area Myanmar has a daughter and a son. Her daughter is also ill and urgently needs medication. Her son has a 1-hour walk to school through the monsoon-soaked area. After school, he will help his father with his work: He runs one of the many small trading boats that ply the river. What is earned on the one Tag is spent directly on the family's daily food. Lei Ni herself does not work: like most women in the region, she has no time for this as all of Tag her time is taken up with household chores. Today, however, this work has to be put on hold: getting the medication is more important, and today is the only day she has the opportunity to do so, as the boat of the Irrawaddy River Doctors - the only way for residents in this region to access medical care - will be docking in her village today.
What is accepted as normality for one part of the world is an unimaginable luxury for many others: a functioning infrastructure that makes it possible to obtain the necessities of life, decent work for both genders and innovations that are so important for a country's society and economy.
The UN also identified this global discrepancy when defining the 17 Sustainable Development Goals in the 2030 Agenda and therefore set Goal 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth - and Goal 9 - Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure. The focus here is on promoting sustainable economic growth in order to initiate sustainable development that benefits all people, reduces inequalities and avoids environmental damage.
If you look at the figures for 2022, it quickly becomes clear that there is still a long way to go. Last year, for example, around 205 million people were unemployed and around 28 million people were in forced labor. In less developed countries, only around 36% of the population use the internet; worldwide, the figure is 66%!
Through our Irrawaddy River Doctors we are creating a little more infrastructure and access to important supply units for the inhabitants of the delta. But it is not only in Myanmar that we are helping to achieve SDG 8 and 9: In Tanzania, for example, we are trying to increase women's employment through targeted scholarships and initiatives.
