The Millennium Villages Project

The Millennium Villages Project (MVP) was founded with the goal of helping impoverished communities in rural Africa achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), formulated and agreed on by all member countries of the United Nations. The MVP is active at 14 sites in 10 African countries. Each site is in a major agro-ecological zone that, together, represent the farming systems used by 90% of the agricultural population and 93% of the agricultural land area in sub-Saharan Africa. The MVP shows that fighting poverty at a village level through community-led development is an effective way of reaching the MDGs. The project operates in 80 villages and, to date, has reached nearly 400,000 people. The Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Development (NFSD) began supporting one Millennium Village in 2007: the Ilolangulu village in Tanzania. Over a five-year-period the Novartis Foundation is investing in the village’s transition from subsistence farming to self-sustaining commercial activity. In addition, the foundation collaborates with the Millennium Villages Project in health-related research to contribute to the achievement of MDGs 4, 5 and 6. As well as financing one of the village clusters, the Novartis Foundation aims to improve the access to effective malaria treatment by donating artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) Coartem®, produced by Novartis, to all 80 Millennium Villages for the treatment of uncomplicated malaria. For Detailes on .com http://www.novartisfoundation.org