Posted by Bill Rigler | Jan 14, 2010 | Tinyhttp://2mp.tw/2v | Comments
Agriculture • Education • Health • Infrastructure • Millennium Development Goals • Sauri, Kenya
Witnessing the promise of Sauri
I’m sitting in a rural doctor’s office listening to the senior administrator describe innovations in maternal health care. As I look around at the bright, airy, and clean conditions of the facilities, my thoughts are interrupted by her cell phone’s ringtone – I think it’s Jay-Z – and I cannot help but think of how amazing it all is. The administrator is teaching me how cell phones and text messages are being used to facilitate treatments for a wide range of illnesses between the health care workers at the clinic and their counterparts at major hospitals halfway across the country.
Here’s the kicker: I’m not in Montana (my home state), or anywhere in the United States for that matter. I’m in Sauri, Kenya – a remote location accessible only by SUVs with good suspension systems – and I am witnessing firsthand how Millennium Promise and its partners in the Millennium Villages project are supporting entire communities to lift themselves out of deep poverty. I have just joined the Millennium Promise team and am on my first visit to see our programs first hand. Most importantly, I am gaining a deep understanding of how valuable the Millennium Villages project is in terms of providing a clear path to achieving the Millennium Development Goals, which is vital to Millennium Promise’s mission.
I’m not sure what I expected to find when I came to Sauri four days ago as part of a visit organized by the Millennium Villages project – a partnership between the Earth Institute at Columbia University, UNDP, and Millennium Promise – but it certainly wasn’t this. Sauri is a cluster of rural villages with an approximate population of 65,000 people spread over 8 square kilometers. I have been to Africa many times before, and suppose that I was expecting to see the still too common situation of malnourished children, a lone hospital clinic with rusty equipment and under-equipped staff, barren fields, and – worst of all – no coverage for my beloved iPhone.
I could not have been more wrong. The Millennium Villages project is combating extreme poverty in Sauri and thirteen other locations in sub-Saharan Africa by taking an integrated approach that combines simple, affordable, and readily available technologies with sound scientific practices in a holistic manner. I must confess that I didn’t necessarily understand the full breadth and depth of what that meant until I visited Sauri, but now that I have seen it, I am convinced that it’s the best way forward for communities that are literally fighting to survive.
For example, our group spent some time speaking with children at the local school in Nyamninia, and I think it is an excellent representation of the integrated approach adopted by the Millennium Villages project. Since school fees have been waived by the Kenyan government, school enrollment has surged, which just happens to address Millennium Development Goals 2 and 3. Through infrastructure improvements, such as the construction of an electrical grid, the students are able to use computers and connect to the internet, which is an indispensable academic tool. Fields have been planted on the school grounds, which provide both nutritious school meals (Millennium Development Goal 1) to students and an invaluable incentive for school attendance. You get the picture…
From here, I’m off to see Millennium Villages in Dertu, Kenya, and Ruhiira, Uganda, and will write more from there. In the meantime, here’s a picture of some new friends of mine who are eating their meals grown right outside the school and provided free of charge as part of the school meals program.
Is this a great job or what?!?
Bill Rigler is the Director of Advocacy and Outreach for Millennium Promise. He is based in New York.
RSS Feed
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Millennium Promise and Bono Street Team, Leandra Gebrakedan. Leandra Gebrakedan said: RT @EndOfPoverty: Check out a firsthand account of successes in the Sauri, Kenya Millennium Village - http://2mp.tw/2v [...]
Its interesting how critics will say that simple, scientific technology is needed at village level but then criticize the Millennium Villages projects. Its great to see the project doing more than just talk about interventions, or even simply to employ them, but to do so en mass. Looking forward to scale up and your posts Bill!
MDG Villages Project
I would like to take this opportunity to commend you for the initiative to eradicate poverty from my village.I believe the objectives are noble and grand at the same time.
One thing that I believe will erode the gains of this initiative is the failure to employ what i call the “Grameen approach” to ensure that the values and skills are looked at as assets and not a means to access free goodies from the MDG project.
Young Educated locals should have been employed to manage the projects so that they apply sound management practices but still touch base with the locals in order to achieve a paradigm shift. Perception of the locals of the project is wrong and not sustainable. I will not be surprised to see the villages sliding back to poverty once the funding stops in 2015.
I come from the Sauri area so my views may not be applicable to other project sites.
I would like to comment on Chris’s sentiments about the MVP approach. Mr. Isom, you are absolutely entitled to your opinion in this blog. I think what is missing is the full understanding of the whole concept of the Millennium Villages. indeed, the injection of investments in all sectors is paramount to ensure food security and provision of services, including infrastructure in the start-up period. As long as subsidies are provided for the first three years, there is concerted efforts to transform the agricultural production to business-oriented agriculture. This is done through bringing in the agro-input dealers, micro finance institutions (Equity Bank is a key one for the Sauri site) and market players to the proximity of the farmers. This, coupled with a lot of capacity building of farmers is bearing tremendous fruits in food security and income generation.
As an example, the school meals programme was supported by the project for the first four years as we lay ground for the schools/parents to manage the process thereafter. The Nyamninia case is classical where the school management led by the headteacher is now entirely supporting the programme through school farms and parents’ contributions.
You can make reference to this site in the ‘practioners’ guide to the Millennium Villages approach’ http://www.millenniumvillages.org/
The entire management and field teams of the project are composed of locals (100% Kenyans). There is no foreign capacity on the ground. And this happens in all the 14 sites, where the projects are implemented by nationals. These teams are backed by technical people based in regional offices (Nairobi and Bamako) and in New York. Each of the ground teams adopts the concept based on local conditions and community needs.
Your curiosity is welcome, this is how you will come to understand more details. Please visit our website for a lot more information.
———————————————
Editor’s Note:
Patrick Mutuo is the Science Coordinator and Team Leader for the Sauri MVP. He is based in Sauri, Kenya.