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 The Millennium Development Goals are central to the World Bank Group's mission and our everyday work.
We will work with our 187 members from across the world, with the UN, with civil society, and with the private sector to deliver that Millennium promise: a world that overcomes poverty and hunger; strengthens health and education; creates good-paying jobs; and restores a cleaner environment. A world where all citizens have access to opportunity and hope.
Positive past achievements
We have seen that success is possible. In 1981, 52 percent of people in developing countries lived in extreme poverty; by 2005, that share had been cut by more than half. Efforts by developing countries were paying off right up until the crisis, with poverty falling sharply in East Asia, Latin America, and Eastern and Central Europe.
Progress slowed and reversed by crisis
But success has been uneven, and the triple-blow of the food, fuel, and financial crises since 2008 has slowed down and even reversed progress towards the MDGs in many countries around the world.
The World Bank estimates that 64 million more people are living in extreme poverty in 2010, and some 40 million more people went hungry last year because of the food, fuel, and financial crises.
By 2015, 1.2 million more children under five may die, 350,000 more students may not complete primary school, and about 100 million more people may remain without access to safe water.
These are not just challenges for a summit week. These are challenges every day. Every day when a mother goes without food for the sake of her child; every day when a girl is pulled out of school for the sake of her brother; ever day when a grandmother takes in her grandchild with HIV-AIDS, because she is quite simply the only one left alive in her family.
And these are challenges not just faced by mothers and fathers, grandparents and children in the poorest countries. Seventy percent of the world's poor live in middle income countries.
"Access Agenda"
Over the past ten years, the WBG has invested $33 billion in health and nutrition in developing countries. We pledge to mobilize substantial new investments in a wide range of sectors to help countries close the gap and achieve the MDGs.
We are focusing particularly on "The Access Agenda"; helping to ensure access to basic health, quality schooling, clean water, energy, food, and jobs - looking, not just at the numbers, but at the quality of services.
In health, we are increasing the scope of our results-based programs by more than $600 million until 2015 - so people have benefits in their hands before the money flows. We are focusing on 35 countries, particularly in East Asia, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa that face challenges in achieving the MDGs due to high fertility, poor child and maternal nutrition, and high rates of child and maternal disease.
To help countries achieve the education MDGs, the World Bank commits to increasing its zero-interest investment in basic education by an additional $750 million. These investments will focus on the countries - particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa - that are not on track to reach the education MDGs by 2015.
We are expanding our support to infrastructure - where we have more than quadrupled our lending since 2000; and to agriculture, so central to boosting incomes, employment, and food security in many low-income countries.
We are working with our partners to deliver measurable results across the development agenda. We need to interconnect the various goals. It is not enough to build health clinics if there are no roads for mothers to gain access to them.
It is not enough to train teachers or provide textbooks, if children have to struggle with homework at night in the dark. People do not live their lives in health sectors, or education sectors, or infrastructure sectors, arranged in tidy compartments. People live in families, villages, communities, countries, where all the issues of everyday life merge. We need to connect the dots.
This is what IDA, the World Bank's fund for the poorest, is doing. Over the last 10 years, IDA has increased its no- interest and grant funding in support of developing countries from $4.4 billion in 2000 to $14.5 billion this year.
Since 2000, IDA funding has helped save 13 million lives.
IDA has immunized 311 million children; provided access to water and sanitation for 177 million people; helped more than 47 million people access health services; provided nutrition supplements to 99 million children; and educated 13 million girls.
And IDA is often the critical cornerstone on which country-led and donor-coordinated support is built.
IDA needs a new replenishment this year. I ask you to help us so we can help the most vulnerable.
Adapting to a New Multipolar Global Economy
The world has changed greatly since the meeting in 2000 to launch the Millennium Development Goals. Today it is emerging economies that are helping pull the world economy out of recession.
Today, some developing countries are emerging as economic powers; others are moving towards becoming additional poles of growth; and yet some are struggling to attain their potential within this new system - where North and South, East and West, can be points on a compass, not economic destinies.
An African Pole of Growth
I believe in Africa. I believe that Africa can be a global pole of growth.
Before the crisis, African economies were growing at 5 percent a year for over a decade, accelerating to over 6 percent for the last three years. Poverty was declining by about one percentage point a year - a rate faster than in India.
Before the crisis, primary school enrolment rates were rising faster than in any other continent. And in just 4 years, child mortality rates fell by 25 percent in about 13 countries.
Of course there is another side to that story - the nearly 400 million Africans who live on $1.25 a day; the massive infrastructure deficit that leaves only one in four with access to electricity - and even fewer with access to clean water and sanitation.
But I believe that with the right policies and good governance, with support for infrastructure and skills-training, Africa can attract investment - on African terms. We have seen it in the telecommunications sector, where over $56 billion has been invested by the private sector in mobile networks on the African continent, boosting the number of mobile subscribers in the region from 4 million to over 400 million.
We have seen it in the tourism sector where international tourism receipts in Sub-Saharan Africa have tripled.
We have seen it in new private investors from other developing countries investing in the region's manufacturing and infrastructure.
And this can be just the beginning.
As we review the last decade of MDG progress at the UN this week, we must also look beyond and behind the numbers to see what we can learn from them. We need to invest in what works and fix or end what doesn't. We need to work with developing countries as clients, not as development models from textbooks. We need to help them solve problems, not test theories.
And as we do, we must remember that this work is ultimately about empowering people, families, and communities.
Last week, I walked around a poor village in a mountainous part of Guizhou Province, China. It was a village like very many villages I have visited in Africa, Central America, and India.
But these farmers were doing better; the Chinese government and the Bank had offered some modest support to build water cisterns, access roads, terraced lands and the villagers had done the rest: harvesting more crops, adding pigs. They didn't want a blueprint. They didn't want handouts. All they wanted was a chance.
When I look across this Assembly Hall, I imagine the faces of those shrewd and practical villagers, sitting with you. They know what they can do. They want to know what you will do. 
Robert Zoellick is the President of the World Bank Group. Presented above was his Address at the United Nations General Assembly Hall during the recently concluded UN Summit on MDGs.
Source: World Bank
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