Millennium Promise
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Millennium Promise is a non-profit organization dedicated to ending extreme poverty by 2025. Its flagship initiative, Millennium Villages, is an integrated, community-driven strategy meant to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and provide communities with the basic tools and necessities to put themselves on the path toward self-sustainable development. Combining scientific and local knowledge, Millennium Promise believes in the need to attack the root problems of poverty--hunger, disease, poor education, insufficient infrastructure--simultaneously. The organization engages donor nations, corporations, and the public at large as stakeholders in the process.
Currently, Millennium Promise works in 78 villages across ten different countries--Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda. Each Millennium Village has approximately 5,000 inhabitants and work spans approximately five years. Sauri, Kenya was selected to become the first Millennium Village in 2004.
Millennium Promise was co-founded by the economist Jeffrey Sachs and the philanthropist Ray Chambers. The project work of the Millennium Villages are overseen by a Scientific Council composed of leading scientific and development authorities at the UN Millennium Project and The Earth Institute at Columbia University, both of which are headed by Sachs.
In September 2006, the financier and philanthropist George Soros pledged $50 million to Millennium Promise to fund 33 Millennium Villages. This donation has received added attention as a departure from Soros' characteristic sponsorship of democracy-building and good governance-focused programs.[1]
Millennium Promise also supports independent projects to address factors that contribute to extreme poverty and is a founding partner of Malaria No More. Launched in December 2006 at the White House Summit on Malaria, Malaria No More brings together corporations, foundations, faith-based groups, grassroots networks, and the public to support a comprehensive approach to control malaria.
