Millennium Villages Project

The Millennium Villages Project is/was a demonstration project of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, the United Nations Development Programme, and Millennium Promise aimed at proving that its integrated approach to rural development can be used to achieve the Millennium Development Goals—eight globally endorsed targets that address the problems of poverty, health, gender equality, and disease—by 2015. Although the website for the project is still up, the current status of the project is unclear, and the most recent "recent news" cited at the website is from January 2016.

By improving access to clean water, primary education, basic health care, sanitation, and other science-based interventions such as improved seeds and fertilizer, Millennium Villages aims to ensure that communities living in extreme poverty have a real, sustainable opportunity to lift themselves out of the poverty trap.

The first Millennium village was launched in 2005 in Sauri, Kenya. "This is a village that’s going to make history," is how Millennium Villages founder Jeffrey Sachs described Sauri in The Diary of Angelina Jolie and Dr. Jeffrey Sachs in Africa, a 2005 MTV documentary. "It’s a village that’s going to end extreme poverty."

Millennium Villages are divided into different types. There are the original core villages which include different agro-ecological zones covering 14 sites in 10 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including: Sauri and Dertu, Kenya; Koraro, Ethiopia; Mbola, Tanzania; Ruhiira, Uganda; Mayange, Rwanda; Mwandama and Gumulira, Malawi; Pampaida and Ikaram, Nigeria; Potou, Senegal; Tiby and Toya, Mali and Bonsaaso, Ghana.

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