Millennium Villages Project

The Millennium Villages Project is a project of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, the United Nations Development Programme, and Millennium Promise.

It is an approach to ending extreme poverty and meeting the Millennium Development Goals--eight globally endorsed targets that address the problems of poverty, health, gender equality, and disease. Initiating a paradigm shift, the Millennium Villages promote an integrated approach to rural development, using evidence-based technologies and strategies in each sector, with sufficient investment over a sufficient period of time. This approach also combines a critical cost-sharing and planning partnership with local and national governments, and rural, African communities, while focusing on capacity building and community empowerment. By improving access to clean water, sanitation and other essential infrastructure, education, food production, basic health care, and environmental sustainability, Millennium Villages ensures that communities living in extreme poverty have a real, sustainable opportunity to lift themselves out of the poverty trap.^[1]

Millennium Villages are divided into different types. There are the original core villages which include different agroforestry zones covering 13 sites in 10 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including: Sauri and Dertu, Kenya; Koraro, Ethiopia, Mbola Tanzania, Ruhiira, Uganda, Mayange, Rwanda, Mwandama, Malawi, Pampaida and Ikaram, Nigeria, Potou, Senegal, Tiby and Toya, Mali, and Bonsaaso, Ghana.^[2]

There are additional Millennium Villages which are following the Millennium Village program but which are not directly supported through the Earth Institute at Columbia University. These additional villages are located in Liberia, Cambodia, Jordan, Mozambique, Haiti, Cameroon and Benin.

Guiding Principles

• Promote sustainable, scalable, community-led progress toward the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals through the use of scientifically validated interventions—one village at a time
• Ensure African ownership of the Millennium Development Goals, and work in partnership with African governments and regional groups
• Increase capacity and community empowerment in Africa through training and knowledge sharing with local African governments, NGOs, and village communities.
• Partner with the public and private sectors, innovative NGOs, universities and leading experts, and the international donor community throughout Africa and the world to continually improve and coordinate development strategies.
• Transform rural sub-subsistence farming economies into small-scale enterprise development economies and promote diversified entrepreneurs^[3]

Financing

The Government of Japan (through its Human Security Trust Fund) and private philanthropic donors (through the Earth Institute at Columbia University) provided the financing the first set of Millennium Villages, reaching some 60,000 people.

A core aspect of the Millennium Villages is that the poverty-ending investments in agriculture, health, education, and infrastructure can be financed by donors at an incremental cost of just $50 per villager per year—$250,000 per village per year. The overhead costs of managing the project in each village is $50,000 per year.

On a per-person basis, the total village cost of $110 per person includes:

• $50 Donor funding through the Millennium Village program
• $30 Local and national governments (this is most likely to include funding for interventions themselves and the provision of agricultural and health extension workers in the villages)
• $20 Partner organizations (e.g., existing programs supported by official bilateral donors) and in-kind corporate giving (for example, Sumitomo Chemical Corporation recently agreed to donate insecticide-treated bednets for the Millennium Villages)
• $10 Village members, typically through in-kind contributions of their time and expertise

Critically, the external financing needs of $70 per capita are in line with the financial commitments made by the leaders of industrialized countries at the 2005 Summit in Gleneagles. G8 countries promised to raise their development assistance to Africa to the equivalent of $70 per capita by 2010.

Prospects for increasing village-based interventions

Launched on 1 June 2006, the Millennium Villages Project was initially planned as a five-year project, a second phase has now been planned for 2011-2015.

In a review of the project undertaken by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) crop yield increases of 85-350% were recorded as well as reductions in malaria incidence of over 50%^[4]. While agricultural surpluses are able to be channelled into school meals programmes, helping to increase enrolment, improvements in health status are reported to increase labour productivity.^[4]

According to ODI policy conclusions, in order for wider scale, more sustainable implementation to be achieved, village projects need to identify shared goals, seeking evidence-based, cost-effective interventions by governments and implementing agencies.^[4] They will also need to focus on addressing upstream investments such as training facilities for front-line staff.^[4]

Critics

When compared to the Ekwendeni village of the Soils, Food and Healthy Communities (SFHC), the Millennium Villages obtain only similar achievements at far greater expenses. This is a result of the Millennium Villages' use of Artificial fertilizers and hybrids seeds (often of plants such as corn; which are not indigenous to the area). SFHC, on the other hand, uses diverse legume crops to improve soil health: "The SFHC research project attempts to improve child nutritional status, household food security and soil fertility through use of different legume options which can improve the quality and quantity of food available within the household as well as provide organic inputs to improve soil fertility."^[5] According to Rachel Bezner Kerr, use of fertilizers and genetically modified seeds leads to dependence of the farmers on expensive products being marketed by large industrial companies.^[6] By contrast, the use of crop diversity to improve soil health is a low cost, and thus far more sustainable, solution.

See also

• Jeffrey Sachs
• Pedro Sanchez

Footnotes

1. ^ Friedrich, M. J. (2007). "Jeffrey Sachs, PhD: Ending Extreme Poverty, Improving the Human Condition". Journal of the American Medical Association 298 (16): pp 1849–1851. doi:10.1001/jama.298.16.1849. PMID 17954530. http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/298/16/1849. Retrieved 2007-11-26. 
2. ^ "Village Descriptions". Millennium Villages Project. http://www.millenniumvillages.org/aboutmv/mv_2.htm. Retrieved 2008-06-30. 
3. ^ "Millennium Villages: Executive Summary". Millennium Promise. http://www.millenniumpromise.org/site/DocServer/Executive_SummaryUSE.pdf?docID=861. Retrieved 2007-11-08. 
4. ^ ^{a b c d} "Can project-funded investments in rural development be scaled-up? Lessons from the Millennium Villages Project". Overseas Development Institute. November 2008. http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/details.asp?id=2573&title=can-project-funded-investments-rural-development-be-scaled-up-lessons-millennium-villages-project. 
5. ^ Soils, Food, and Healthy Communities. Research Results (main page). http://soilandfood.org/research-results/
6. ^ Critics to millennium villages

References

• Chibomba, Kelvin. "Mobile Communications for Rural Homes in Africa". OneWorld Africa. OneWorld.net. http://africa.oneworld.net/article/view/154953/1/610. Retrieved 2007-11-08. ^{[dead link]}

External links

• Official Website
• Official UN Website
• Official Columbia University Website
• Review of the Millennium Villages Project carried out by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), 2008