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. 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.
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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:
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.
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]
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.
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