Editors Note:This piece lays out the early resolutions that Global Citizens will be committing to for 2015. This is not a comprehensive list of all of the work for the upcoming year, it is rather an early set of pledges and promises that the organization and its supporters as believe will be important in this crucial year for global development. To lay out these New Year’s resolutions, we are featuring the Global Poverty Project’s Senior Manager for Global Policy and Advocacy, Michael Sheldrick. It is our hope that if you are reading this, that you will sign up to take part in making these resolutions a reality. It will take every single Global Citizen to ensure this year sets the world up to end extreme poverty by 2030.

2015 is a pivotal year to change the future of our people and our planet.

Our leaders are writing the world’s ‘to do list’ for a generation. Working in our name, they’re setting goals for how we’re going to end extreme poverty by 2030.

Back in 2000, world leaders created the Millennium Development Goals. These goals have helped the world halve extreme poverty, cut child deaths by half, and get 50 million more kids in school. But they’re only part of the story.

This coming September, leaders will agree to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the next 15 years. These are goals for Global Citizens, meaning goals for everyone, everywhere. Goals that tackle the systems that keep people poor, and goals that focus on our common humanity and dignity.

Together, we can create a world where every child can survive and thrive. Where every child can go to school, and where every child is protected from violence and abuse. A world where toilets are taken for granted, and where no one goes to bed hungry. A world where governments and businesses are accountable to their citizens and customers. This is a world without extreme poverty, and it’s the promise that we are making ourselves in 2015.

For Global Citizens, 2015 is a call to action. We must make our leaders raise their ambition for humanity, and then deliver.

We must use every tool available to us- every action, email, tweet, meeting, and event - to make this these promises meaningful.

The Global Citizen platform and Global Poverty Project will use our unique mix of disruptive events, grassroots organizing, and media campaigning to ensure that world leaders set great goals, that the whole world knows about them, and that tangible commitments are made to achieve them, starting right now. This efforts need your support to succeed.

Throughout the year, we will be in communities supporting Global Citizens, taking them on a journey to become better campaigners, and working with them to highlight and win on specific issues like vaccines, sanitation and nutrition.

We need your support in 2015 – because it is only by working together as a movement of Global Citizens that we can ensure that development promises become reality.

Here are a few of our resolutions for 2015:

RESOLUTION: FINISH STRONG ON THE MDGs

Deliver on the issues and promises many nations have been working on since 2000. Many countries and regions have the tools in place to finish strong before these goals expire at the end of 2015, but it will take support and pressure from Global Citizens. This means shining the spotlight on the unfinished business of the Millennium Development Goals, including those targets that are most off track relating to sanitation, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and food and nutrition.

RESOLUTION: GROW THE GLOBAL CITIZEN MOVEMENT

Only by working together as a movement of Global Citizens can we ensure that promises made by our world’s leaders become reality. In 2015, we’ll be creating even more unique and marquee experiences to recruit, engage and reward Global Citizens. That means more benefits for Global Citizens and though them, more benefits for the world.

RESOLUTION: SET UP FOR SUCCESS TO 2030

The key to success in 2030 is the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) being agreed to at the end of this year that will be the blue print for the next 15 years of global development. To raise expectations and political pressure for the sustainable development goals to be as good as possible, we need to make the goals famous - which in turn will enable them to be used as a tool for political accountability in the 2016-2030 period. We’ll all be playing our part to ensure that everyone in the world learns about these new goals and their significance.

RESOLUTION: ENSURE YOUTH ARE AT THE HEART OF THE SDGs

1.8 billion people, or 1 in 4 worldwide, are between the ages of 15 and 25. That's too many to ignore. In 2015, we’ll continue to petition for young people’s rights and needs to be at the heart of the SDGs.

RESOLUTION: FOR WORLD LEADERS TO #GIVEASHIT ABOUT SANITATION

Sanitation is the most off-track of all the MDGs targets. Building off our success in 2014, Global Citizens will be galvanizing the public and private sectors to pledge new resources towards ending open defecation and ensuring the global community address the sanitation crisis head on.

RESOLUTION: $$$ PLEDGED TOWARDS ENDING PREVENTABLE CHILD DEATHS

Many children under the age of 5 continue to die needlessly from entirely preventable causes, including lack of access to basic healthcare like vaccines. We’ll continue to campaign against this injustice by calling on wealthy countries to pledge big at the upcoming replenishment of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. In just a month, Global Citizens will ask world leaders to pledge $7.5 billion to help immunize 300 million children over the next 5 years – potentially saving 5-6 million lives.

RESOLUTION: ENSURE THAT CHILDREN NOT ONLY SURVIVE, BUT ALSO THRIVE

Governments need to ensure that children not only live beyond their fifth birthday, but also have everything else they need to thrive. This includes having access to education, and being protected from violence with girls being particularly at risk. As part of this, we’ll seek to secure a higher commitment from wealthy countries, including the United States, towards providing basic education.

This is just the beginning. These resolutions are the starting point for 2015, only through collective action and public attention from Global Citizens will 2015 truly lay the path to ending extreme poverty in 2030. 

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Michael Sheldrick, Senior Manager, Global Policy and Advocacy for the Global Poverty Project