Earth Institute News Archive
posted 10/02/06
Kenyan Village Recognized for Efforts in Eradicating Poverty and Hunger
Sauri community representative John Wahonya (left) and Millennium Villages Project program assistant Willis Ombai display the award given to Sauri, Kenya at the Africities Summit for efforts in eradicating poverty and hunger.
Image credit: Chrispanus Ekise
The first village to take part in the Millennium Villages Project — Sauri, Kenya — has been recognized for its efforts towards achieving the first Millennium Development Goal by organizers of the 2006 Africities Summit in Nairobi, Kenya.
Representatives from Sauri and the Millennium Villages Project were on hand to receive the award.
This award was one of eight given to a community or organization in Africa, each corresponding to one of the eight Millennium Development Goals, which are globally endorsed objectives aimed at eradicating the multidimensional sources of poverty.
Before applying the science-based interventions of the Millennium Villages Project, the vast majority of Sauri households reported a deficiency in food production, resulting in chronic hunger.
Today, reports show that Sauri has more than doubled the food output of recent harvests.
The Millennium Villages Project is a “bottom up” approach to lifting developing country villages out of the poverty trap that afflicts more than a billion people worldwide. The Millennium Villages Project plans to provide early successes on how to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) — clear targets for reducing poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women — by 2015. The concept was developed by a team of scientific experts at The Earth Institute and the UN Millennium Project.
The fourth annual Africities summit focused discussion on how African cities and towns can achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Approximately 5,000 delegates representing almost all African countries attended the summit.