Speed and Sustainability is Needed

Both speed and sustainability is needed.  You must have both.  Are the Millennium Villages sustainable by the local people and their government?

When thousands of people are dying or getting sick, quick intervention is needed.  Those interventions like mosquito nets are quick and effective.  However, these nets will wear-out and will need to be replace.

Can the local people replace them?  IF the answer is no, then Millennium Village Project is a failure.  The people should value the nets and should have the means to replace them.  The project to move on to other development or interventions in the village.  I am sure that is more development work that needs to be done or retooled to work better.

I think replicability is biggest issue for me.  How do we bring the ladder of prosperity to other villages?  At some point, these Millennium Villages should adopt a neighboring village or two.  Some interventions in the agriculture area should be reproducible and shared.

So a successful Millennium Village should have Speed, next Sustainability, and next Replicability.

Link: Global Venture: A MODEL FOR THE MILLENNIUM: One village paves a path out of poverty.

Despite the modest success of Mayange’s interventions, progress throughout the rest of Africa has remained limited. Critics have called into question the methods of Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, the UN economist who heads the Earth Institute, for what they see as an idealistic approach to some of the toughest challenges facing the global community. Even where there have been pockets of success, critics fear that the pace with which these strategies are being implemented is too fast for its own good.