ATLANTA (ABP) -- The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship has announced plans to take 12 students around the world to see how missionaries are working to reach the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals.

Sponsored by the Baptist group's Student.Go missions program, the trip includes travel to Romania, Ethiopia, Uganda and Haiti. Traveling June 21 through Aug. 10, the graduate and undergraduate students will also visit the United Nations headquarters in New York and the Washington headquarters of Bread for the World and the Bono-founded ONE Campaign.

The U.N.'s development goals focus on hunger, education, child mortality, gender equality, maternal health, HIV/AIDS and other diseases, environmental sustainability and development. CBF voted last October to endorse the goals.

The idea for the project emerged last year during Antiphony, a CBF-sponsored conference for college students where a special session about the goals generated a lot of interest.

“So many of our field personnel have been involved in the [goals] for quite a while,” said John Derrick, who is coordinating the project. “This trip is an opportunity to really marry those things -- the new passion we have for the [goals] and exposure to the good work the field personnel have been doing all along.”

Derrick said he wants the short-term trip to leave a long-term impact.

“It doesn't end when the trip is over,” Derrick said. “Our expectation is that they will become spokespersons and representatives for what they have experienced -- raising awareness, advocacy and action on their campuses and spheres of influence.”

Graduate or undergraduate students are eligible to apply. Applications must be submitted by Feb. 1. The cost of the trip is $4,950.

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