Editor’s Note: The piece below was published in The Weekly’s 2018 “Joke Issue.” All content, quotations, and other editorializations are entirely fictitious. 

An astonishing United Nations study released this morning shows that Francis W. Parker’s Clean Water and Power of Education Clubs have accomplished 16 of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals–12 years ahead of the 2030 target.

Antonio Gutierrez, recently appointed United Nations Secretary General, spoke highly of the clubs. “The work put forward by these two exceptional girls has led to what I believe will be a better world for generations to come,” he said. “The fact that they managed to put an end to international poverty, eradicated world hunger, and introduced a comprehensive education plan to the world simply by selling muffins and heart-shaped soap to the wealthiest residents of Lincoln Park blows my mind.”

When asked for a comment on this, Desiree Evan-Cooke declined, with her secretary stating that she was “getting quite close to achieving total nuclear disarmament and peace in the Middle East, and as such was too busy right now.”

Bella Shafaie, the other member of the now famous duo, has one regret. “It really pains me to admit it, but the only UN Sustainable Development Goal we are yet to have achieved is goal number six—as of now, the world still lacks clean water in many places,” she said. “We’ve tried everything we could think of—alongside our usual bake sales and MX announcements, over last summer the two of us visited Cairo and worked to construct a more modern bathroom there. We even constructed a filter over one water source there. It really shocks me that all that effort couldn’t fix such a major global international problem that the world’s governments have been failing to address for the past two thousand years.”