Design 21: Social Design Network

Programs

Our flagship initiative, the Millennium Villages, now operating in 80 villages across 10 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, takes a comprehensive approach to addressing extreme poverty. By combining the best scientific and local knowledge, Millennium Villages address all the major problems simultaneously -- hunger, disease, inadequate education, lack of safe drinking water, and absence of essential infrastructure -- to assist communities on their way to self-sustainable development. The project is already producing remarkable results. Read more about the Millennium Villages and how you can help here.

Millennium Promise also plays a leading role in mobilizing the private sector to find solutions to key problems that contribute to extreme poverty in Africa , like malaria, which kills between one and three million Africans a year. Millennium Promise is a founding partner of Malaria No More, an initiative launched at the December 2006 White House Summit on Malaria that seeks to galvanize corporations, foundations, faith-based groups, grassroots networks, and the public to support a comprehensive approach to controlling the deadly, yet preventable disease. Read more about Malaria No More and donate a life-saving insecticide-treated bed net here.

News & Events

February 2007 Millennium Promies co-founder Ray Chambers was appointed by Ban Ki-moon to be the United Nations Special Envoy for Malaria.

October, 2007 PEOPLE Magazine features John Legend and his trip to a Millennium Village in Tanzania. Legend talks about his experience and invites people to join his Show Me Campaign which helps support some of the poorest people in Africa. Photos and interview with Legend are part of PEOPLE's “Heroes” Issue.

September, 2007 At this year's Clinton Global Initiative, Swiss Re announced their new partnership with Millennium Promise to combat the harmful impact of climate shocks on some of the poorest people throughout Africa.

September, 2007 With the coordination of Millennium Promise, the President of Tanzania, Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, and key members of his delegation, met with prospective investors at a luncheon hosted by Lehman Brothers.

September, 2007 Swedish company Ericsson recently agreed to provide connectivity to the Millennium Villages taking a major step in bridging the digital divide and creating growth opportunities in some of the poorest regions in Africa.

August, 2007 Millennium Promise is featured in a new book by former President Bill Clinton. "Giving: How each of us can change the world" is an inspiring look at the innovative efforts being made to solve problems and save lives around the world. In the book, President Clinton highlights the work in Millennium Villages as a model program worthy of support and expansion.

July, 2007 Does corporate philanthropy transcend borders? U.S. workers think so. According to a survey conducted by CareerBuilder and Millennium Promise, 72% say their companies should help people living in extreme poverty around the world if they have the resources to do so.

July, 2007 Call it fashion with a cause. OmniPeace (www.omni-peace.com) is making a big splash in New York, Los Angeles and London with t-shirt sales attracting all groups -- from celebrities to socially-minded citizens. Mary Fanaro, an LA-based entrepreneur, founded the company and has pledged proceeds to Millennium Promise. She's brought on board several manufacturers, designers and clothing stores including Signorelli, Kitson and Scoop.

History

The Millennium Villages are based on a single powerful idea: impoverished villages can transform themselves and meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 if they are empowered with proven, powerful, practical technologies. It is simply a "bottom up" approach to lifting villages in developing countries out of the poverty trap that confines more than one billion people worldwide.

The concept? Doing all of it at once. Goals can be achieved by bundling critical yet straightforward solutions in a comprehensive investment strategy and working directly with the poorest of the poor.

By investing in health, food production, education, access to clean water, and essential infrastructure, these community-led interventions will enable impoverished villages to escape extreme poverty once and for all. Once these communities get a foothold on the bottom rung of the development ladder they can propel themselves on a path of self-sustaining economic growth.

The concept was developed by a team of scientific experts at The Earth Institute at Columbia University and the UN Millennium Project. Millennium Promise is working in 80 villages in ten different countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda.

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ASU creates community forum on world challenges

Community, Communication Design

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Arizona State University recently launched a community campaign called ASU Challenges to ask people ...

Posted December 03, 2008
By Chakris Kussalanant

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