More than 10 years ago, 189 nations of the UN made a promise and global leaders pledged to ‘spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanising conditions of extreme poverty.’ It was a promise with eight goals adopted and a deadline of 2015 materialized in the form of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

As 2015 approaches, increasing global uncertainties such as the economic crisis, extreme natural disasters and climate change have led to many of the targets being derailed and put off-track.

We can help. These challenges are widely ignored or remain unnoticed to those living in the developed world yet they affect all of us. Awareness is a major issue. As an example, the current lack of awareness affects the immediate relief and assistance required in response to natural disasters and calamities of any kind, as most recently seen in the devastating Pakistani floods and monsoons of 2010 and 2011. The scale of the devastation is hard to imagine. The 2010 flooding alone is a larger humanitarian disaster than hurricane Katrina, the Japanese earthquake and the South-East Asian tsunami combined.

The funds raised from Iconic Rickshaws for Relief will tackle those off-track Millennium Development Goals and hopefully raise awareness to the urgency of these issues.