About the exhibition

Caritas Australia in partnership with the Australian Government’s aid agency, AusAID, are exhibiting a travelling display around Australia in 35 locations over 18 months. The exhibition commenced in February 2009 in Brisbane.

Blueprint for a Better World highlights the Millennium Development Goals and the promise of Governments throughout the world to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by 2015.

The multimedia exhibition has a particular focus on development programs in Papua New Guinea, Cambodia, and Africa; gives a practical face to the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); Close the Gap on Indigenous Australian health and the importance of achieving the goals in relation to health in our region.

Video, photographs, visual installation as well as contributions (such as posters, baskets, school books, readers) from Caritas partner communities make up the installation. Each of the eight goals are presented as a blueprint for positive social change in our world, highlighting how Caritas Australia and the Australian Government, through AusAID, are engaged in the challenge of tackling poverty for the world’s poorest.

Be challenged
The exhibition also presents a challenge for all and a call for action at all levels. If the MDGs are to be achieved, it is not just government initiative that is required. A commitment from the public is also necessary.

In a number of creative ways within and adjacent to the exhibition space, Caritas Australia invites individuals and groups to take action: learning more about breaking the burden of poverty (workshops with speakers); joining national and global networks (signing up to Caritas Australia campaigns run with Make Poverty History and Close the Gap alliances); pressing governments to keep promises made when the MDGs were promulgated in 2000.

One interactive aspect of the exhibit are the Pledge Towers, which provide an opportunity for those who view the exhibition to write down the contribution they intend to make to ending global poverty. The pledges then become a component of the living exhibition, enhancing the reality of the positive difference one person – and indeed a community of people – can make in the world.