The Millennium Development Goals have been embraced by the Episcopal Church at the past three General Conventions, culminating in 2006 when the church made supporting the MDGs its No. 1 mission priority. -- a recognition that living the Gospel requires an active global partnership to end extreme poverty.

It was also in 2006 that the Episcopal Church Women of the Diocese of NC committed to helping achieve the Goals, which, as the Rev. Mike Kinman, Executive Director of Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation, explains, "are a part of the larger work of Christ drawing the whole world to himself, bringing wholeness to all that has been broken and, life by life, fulfilling the dream God has for all humanity."

Illustrating this pledge of time, talent and treasure is a MDG cross handcrafted by the women of the Church of the Redeemer in Greensboro. Debra Smithdeal, chair of the diocese's MDG Subcommittee (left), and Scott Hughes, a member of the subcommittee, are pictured here at Diocesan Convention 2009 standing next to side of the cloth cross bearing the international symbols of the eight MDGs.

Last November, at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the ECW of the diocese, Gertrude Murchison of St. Stephen's Church in Winston-Salem (left), Colleen Segokgo, president of the Mothers' Union in the Anglican Diocese of Botswana (center) and Florence Bogopa, president of Botswana's Anglican Women's Fellowship, posed with the flip side of the cross. It pictures ways in which women of the Church are working to meet the MDGs.

More images of the cross can be found here.