It can be done: Kenyan Millenium Village beats poverty
Published: September 15, 2005
Countries around the world have signed up to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals - eight broad targets to combat poverty and boost development.
A decade ahead of the target date, many regions are making progress. But in sub-Saharan Africa, the outlook is bleak. Many countries are floundering - and in some cases, going backwards.
But in the Kenyan village of Sauri, an experiment has been taking place. Development experts, the government, and villagers are working to try to prove that obstacles can be overcome.
In August 2004, experts from the Earth Institute at New York’s Columbia University and the UN approached the villagers of Sauri to see if they would like to take part in a project - and become a UN “Millennium Village”.
The idea was to show that an integrated approach to development, which tackled multiple needs and responded to local conditions, could lay the foundations for long-lasting change, even in the most difficult circumstances.
The village and the government provided just over half the funding; the rest was in international aid.
Sauri was a village in crisis, with massive malnutrition, high rates of child mortality, and widespread malaria and Aids. Its crop yields were low or non-existent, and the village clinic had closed because no one could afford the doctor fees or medicines.
What the village did have to offer was a strong community of 5,200 inhabitants eager to improve their own lives. Before the project was mooted, villagers had already established committees on health, water and energy, but they lacked resources and technical help.
One year on
A year since the project began, Sauri is undergoing a transformation.
Simultaneous projects in agriculture, water, health, energy, transportation and education are changing the face of the village.
Crop surplus
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The Mom Inventors Handbook: How to Turn Your Great Idea into the Next Big ThingThe first task of project participants was to help villagers improve their agriculture, based on a conviction that economic development rests on agricultural productivity.
Continuous farming had left Sauri’s soil totally depleted, prompting villagers to clear trees in other fields to grow food.
Sauri’s farmers were taught fallow farming techniques and how to use leguminous crops and fertiliser to enrich the soil. The harvest quadrupled within a year – leaving villagers with the novel problem of where to store surplus grain.
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