Exit: Millennium Development Goals or MDGs as of 2015. Enter: Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs for 2016-2030.

When I was mayor of the city of San Fernando, La Union, from 1998-2007, we welcomed the new millennium by forming a Millennium Choir composed of 50 children and 50 employees of the province of La Union and the city. We also heard that UN Habitat and its member countries committed to eight MDGs from 2000-2015.

Following this call, the city borrowed money from a window of the World Bank through the Department of Finance to put up four lying-in clinics to serve clusters of barangay units (villages). This was inspired by our first lying-in clinic in Barangay Bangbangolan, which we put up with our own funds.

Image: Villagers returning home as the sun sets in the Philippines. UN Photo/Oddbjorn Monsen.