The shouts of outrage at the desperate situation of the world's poorest appear to have quietened to a whisper. Calls to “make poverty history” seem to have faded as quickly as the credit crunch has arrived. But while we tighten our belts at home, the chilling facts of international poverty remain brutal. Once again voices must be raised into a pressing chorus for people living in poverty in our global village.

In 2000, world leaders declared that they would spare no effort to achieve eight “millennium development goals”, including halving global poverty, getting all the world's children into school, reducing infant and maternal mortality and providing clean water and sanitation. It was a huge task, but the goals provided a yardstick against which to measure our success and a clear idea of where we would be in 2015. Or so we thought.

Seven years on, some progress has been made, but we are way behind where we should be. Take the goal to reduce infant mortality by two thirds: at present rates this will not be achieved by 2015, or even 2030, but by 2050. The goal to provide primary education for every child will not, at the current, rate of progress be achieved by 2015, but, at best, by 2100.

But it is not all bad news. The role of the British Government, not least through the Prime Minister's personal commitment, in helping to galvanise other countries into action and make available significant funding must be acknowledged. However, recent economic events provide a temptation to lose focus.

The credit crunch and a possible recession have not been triggered by government action. The causes are set deeper in that part of the capitalist enterprise that blinds itself to the human cost of doing business. There are those within the banks, oil speculators, the money markets who seek to make profits with scant regard to their impact on the poorest. Our attention needs to be focused not just on ensuring commitments by governments but also on applying pressure on global corporations and financial institutions to change how they do business that impacts most adversely upon the poor.

Of course as a Church we need to sort out the splinters in our own eyes before bemoaning the beams in others'. We agonise over internal issues and matters that seem positively trivial when compared with the fact that a child dies of hunger every five seconds and from malaria every thirty seconds.

There are programmes being run on the ground by churches and faith-based organisations that are dedicated to enabling governments to reach the millennium development goals. Examples range from a project partly funded by Australian churches running 24 HIV and Aids testing and counselling centres in Papua New Guinea, to an initiative supported by the Episcopal Church in the United States that last year distributed 680,000 mosquito nets and educated three million people in 12 countries.

What all of these programmes - not projects, but sustainable programmes - have in common is that they use a mixture of government and private funding to tap into grassroots networks in the world's poorest regions that almost no one outside faith communities can reach. Yet the effort involved in getting donor governments not to bypass indigenous faith communities for the sake of mega-grants direct to UN agencies is unnecessarily difficult. This is our experience, although the World Health Organisation suggests that 40 per cent of healthcare in developing countries is provided by faith-based organisations; and in countries such as Burundi, about 80per cent of basic education is provided by church schools.

It is a scandal that we allow the ball to be dropped in this way - and we in the Church share the blame, for not shouting louder about our capacity to achieve lasting development solutions. The real disgrace is that, for the first time in history, our generation has a genuine opportunity to eradicate extreme poverty, yet we seem so slow to get on with it. We have the technology, resources and expertise. The success of the Jubilee 2000 campaign shows our politicians that they have the mandate, and can act accordingly.

Today, I will walk through the centre of London with people from all corners of the globe, and of all faiths and none, as a visible sign to the leaders of our nations that we are watching them - they will not be allowed to break the promises they have made to the poorest among us. The walk is a public pledge to redouble the Church's efforts to work towards total eradication of poverty. With today's walk we hope to recapture some of the atmosphere of hope and optimism that managed to move world leaders sufficiently to make the historic announcements that they did just a few years ago.

Those prayers, rallies, letters and e-mails made a difference then. But they can't just become a memory - we have not yet “made poverty history”. Recommit yourself with us today - and help to support world leaders in keeping the promise as well as pressing banks, money markets and multinational corporations to make our commitment to ending poverty truly global.

Dr John Sentamu is Archbishop of York

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