What is the Millennium Village Project?
The Millennium Villages concept was developed by scientists at the Earth Institute at Columbia University and the United Nations Millennium Project under the leadership of Dr. Jeffrey Sachs. It is an integrated, community-level development strategy to end extreme rural poverty based on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs – see below). The Millennium Village Project works directly with communities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and national governments. It utilizes targeted and comprehensive investments to address each of the MDGs using proven methodologies. The Millennium Village Project aims to establish a “proof of concept” for broad-based, community-led development strategies and to show how rural African communities can lift themselves out of poverty and achieve the Goals in a sustainable and scalable way.
