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What is a Millennium Village ?

According to the World Bank, 1 person out of 7 is living in extreme poverty, a very alarming fact. The situation is a lot worse in Subsaharan Africa where 48% of the population live under the poverty line in 2013.

How can we reduce extreme poverty by half before 2015 ? Here is a solution : the Millennium Village Project. An inventive proposition made by Jeffrey Sachs (an American economist and a UN consultant) which consists in tackling all the aspects of poverty at the same time.

By what means ? By providing goods and services in order to fight famines, epidemics, gender inequality and the lack of access to drinking water, health care and education. The project was implemented in several African villages and significant advances were achieved.

However, as it is often the case for international aid projects, the sustainability of the MVP is questioned.

What happens when the UN and its partners put an end to the project in which they were the main donors (65%) ?Can the beneficiaries carry on the initiatives launched during the project on their own ?

We will try to answer these questions throughout a web documentary and a report including all our results.

We chose to study Senegalese villages in particular, in which the MVP was launched in 2006 and ended in 2011. It benefited to 6 villages of the Leona rural community (more precisely in the area of Louga).

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We are planning to go there this summer for 5 weeks in order to observe the social and economic situation in those villages after the donors' withdrawal and to directly collect information about the project’s success or failure.

We will also verify some hypothesis regarding the reasons why some activities failed during the project. This assessment will be done in close collaboration with students of the Master's Degree in Rural Development and Cooperation of the University Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis (Senegal).

More than an assessment, this project will lead to an intercultural exchange between students of various origins and a Senegalese rural community. We will therefore explore those isolated villages with lifestyles and beliefs completely different from ours. To ease our acceptance and thank villagers, we will organize cultural and art activities. All our activities and discoveries will be posted on an internet blog.

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More than an assessment, this project will lead to an intercultural exchange between students of various origins and a Senegalese rural community. We will therefore explore those isolated villages with lifestyles and beliefs completely different from ours. To ease our acceptance and thank villagers, we will organize cultural and art activities. All our activities and discoveries will be posted on an internet blog.

We are a team of 15 postgraduate students (10 out of 15 will carry on the study on site) in Development Studies at the Economic and Social Development Institute in the University Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne (France).

The 10 students going on-site:

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As we are studying to become development experts, this project is an opportunity to evaluate the real impacts of an international aid strategy.

Our work will allow us to analyse an example thanks to the skills and knowledge we acquired during our academic training and we will be able to use quantitative and qualitative techniques of investigation (questionnaires, interviews…).

One of our aims is also to participate in a human adventure - an essential asset to become an expert in the development and humanitarian field.

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Our first goal is to promote intercultural exchange between our two communities as we are very aware of the fact that we will learn a lot from this rural community.

We will organize social and cultural activities for children :

- Drawing atelier

- Origami atelier

- Painting atelier

- Theater

- Sports activities : woman’s soccer game (in order to promote gender equality)

We will also work with local students (pursuing a Master’s Degree in Rural Development and Cooperation) during the entire project. We will put together our know-how and working methods in order to attain our objectives. We hope that this partnership will continue even after the end of our short stay.

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We will assess the “Millennium Villages Project” sustainability and we will verify some hypothesis of the reasons’s why some activities, launched during the project, failed. All this will be done through questionnaires and interviews of targeted villagers and key actors in the community.

Afterwards, all the data collected will be statistically processed and lead to a report

We will also have to share our results with local organisations (NGOs, cooperatives…) in order to find viable solutions to the problems highlighted by our report.

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After collecting all the data using questionnaires, interviews and observations, we are planning to process it statistically.

This study and the results will be gathered in a report in which all the steps we followed will be detailed. We will also provide an analysis of these results.

During our stay in Senegal, we will keep a record of all the moments spent in the villages. We are planning to realize a documentary in which we will explain and show our activities step by step (interviews with the locals and local organisations, our integration in the village…).

We will share all our discoveries with you !

A blog is being developed where we will (as frequently as possible) post articles on cultural practices in the villages, their way of life, the local food with of course lots of pictures !

If you want to discover the undercurrents of the "Millennium Village Project" and the ways of life in the rural community of Leona, SUPPORT US.

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A la découverte d'un "Village du Millénaire" au Sénégal