Millennium Villages: Celebrity Supporters

Based at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, the Millennium Villages Project is a new bottom-up approach to lift developing country villages out of the poverty trap that afflicts more than a billion people worldwide.

At a cost of just $110 per person per year, each Millennium Village will include:

Access to low-cost fertilizer, training on agroforestry and other natural methods to improve soil fertility, and drought- and/or insect-resistant seeds for crop planting;
Investments to achieve gender equality in participation and management of village projects;
Daily school lunch feeding programs to increase school attendance and completion, and together with nutritional supplementation programs, to assure nutritional quality and sustainability;
New health clinic in the village, access to essential medicines, provision of anti-malarial long-lasting insecticide treated bed nets, a village doctor, and nurses;
Solar-powered lighting systems for homes, electricity, and cleaner cook stoves;
Use of simple tools such as foot pumps to more effectively gain access to water, and water filtration and purification systems;
Innovative information technologies;
Supporting the creation of committees in charge of various activities empowering communities to decide what is needed as a group and ensure active community ownership and partnership in all project activities.