An initiative of The VII Foundation, Generation Human Rights, and Photoville, the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) Interactive Classroom Program, and Mobile Exhibit Bus Tour was a global human rights learning project. 

The VII Foundation contributing photographers and filmmakers documented life on the ground in Sub-Saharan Africa’s most impoverished villages at the close of a decade of targeted poverty reduction interventions. Danny Wilcox Frazier, Ron Haviv, Ed Kashi, Gary Knight, and Fiona Turner bring to life the realities of villagers in Ethiopia, Ghana, Rwanda, and Senegal, capturing the big picture through small, intimate details and moments that personalize the experience of this vast economic development project.

The Millennium Villages Project, a brainchild of Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, set out to improve the quality of life for villagers living in some of Africa’s poorest locales. Ambitiously targeting multiple sectors of daily life, such as health, education, and infrastructure, the project operated on a ten-year timeline and ended at the end of 2015.

The initial analyses of the ten-year-long project suggest broad successes. As award-winning international correspondent Joshua Hammer writes in his MVP book introduction, “New roads… allowed farmers to bring their crops to markets in nearby towns, building a monetized economy. In some villages, money went to pay for solar-generated power, helping to create a sustainable electrical grid.” Of successes with girls’ education, he adds, it’s “a phenomenon that would have been unimaginable a mere decade ago.”

Through the documentation produced by The VII Foundation’s contributing photographers, with support from the Blue Chip Foundation, such reports came to life. Their work includes four photo essays, accompanying films, a book, and an exhibition. The statistics from Sach’s Earth Institute at Columbia University become more than mere numbers; this visual work gives dynamism and feeling to the people impacted by the interventions. 

The Millennium Villages Project aims to show hundreds of thousands of people’s progress and demonstrates to the world that ending extreme poverty is possible. These experiences guide the more significant efforts of development organizations, governments, and the public.

As the world embarks on achieving Sustainable Development Goals, we are responsible for learning from what we have done in the past and moving toward making a sustainable future for all.