The move is not only to boost the morale of the Bangladeshi cricketers in the "World Cup Cricket 2007", but also to inspire the whole nation to work for achieving the MDGs by 2015.

The teenage tiger has been named as 'Bagha' in Bengali, said a UN release yesterday.

Bagha came into life during the production process of an animation (cartoon) series on the MDGs in 2005. The cartoon series, which is aimed at advancing the MDGs attainment for the country through using this infotainment devise, uses the roaring Royal Bengal Tiger as the MDG mascot for Bangladesh.

The United Nations in Bangladesh, in cooperation with the British High Commission and DFID Bangladesh, produced eight animation segments to promote the Millennium Development Goals in Bangladesh, specially among the youth. Each segment introduces a relevant MDG.

Appreciating the initiative, eminent cultural personality Mustafa Monwar said, "National culture, symbol and icons should not be confined to museums. Those should rather be employed innovatively to achieve the developmental goals for moving ahead with the changing time."

"The fundamental beauty of these films is that they take the MDGs and other concepts that are often buried in the development jargons and turn them into something real, tangible and understandable, particularly for young people", he added.

Meanwhile, UNICEF representative in Bangladesh Louis-Georges Arsenault said "Six of the eight MDGs relate directly to children. So what better way to reach kids than to make fun and informative cartoons?"

This is what the MDGs are all about - thinking of new, creative and innovative ways to reach people, he added.

"We know in Bangladesh that animation could be a powerful tool and is a great method of communication," Arsenault said, referring to the success of the Meena initiative that has created waves as everyone in Bangladesh knows her.

The Millennium Development Goals are a set of international agreed targets for reducing poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, combating HIV/AIDS and discrimination against women by 2015.

The MDGs represent a simple, but powerful idea. By setting basic targets for a number of critically important development outcomes, they provide guidance and direction towards the achievement of eight key goals, beginning with decisive reduction of poverty.

If the world achieves the MDGs, more than 500 million people will be lifted out of poverty. A further 25 million will no longer suffer from hunger, while 30 million children and two million mothers who might reasonably have been expected to die will be saved.

With a view to fulfilling the commitments, Bangladesh has made significant progress in achieving universal primary education (goal 2), which is just 17 percent below the target set for 2015. And in promoting gender equality and women empowerment (goal 3), which is very close to fulfilling its target set for 2015. Also Bangladesh has strong initiative to reduce child mortality (goal 4) as presently the number of deaths per thousand stands at 82 for children under the age of five while the target for 2015 is to bring that figure to 50 deaths per thousand.

But, challenges remain in other fields like eradication of extreme poverty and hunger (goal 1), improving maternal health (goal 5) and to ensure environmental sustainability (goal 7). In terms of combating HIV/AIDS, Bangladesh needs stronger advocacy and awareness building among the people.

Also, to develop a global partnership for development with the developed countries, Bangladesh needs strong advocacy policy to assure cooperation from the donors.