Community based interventions accelerate progress to attainment of MDGs

In the pictures - various scenes of how the Millennium Villages Project is helping people; from boreholes to school feeding programmes.

Mwandama Millennium Village Project, Zomba, April 10 2008 – In great detail, Alex Mpuku, a farmer in Chiunda Village, Traditional Authority Mlumbe in Zomba district, explains how the Millennium Village Project has changed his life.

“Before the programme started, there was no meaningful agriculture to talk about in this area as people did not have enough interaction with agricultural extension workers and there was no practice of modern methods of agriculture,” Mpuku says as he conducts visitors through his household displaying the achievements he has made since 2005.

Mpuku boasts a burnt brick tin roofed house, a tailoring business outfit, an agricultural produce business and livestock, which he attributes to the Millennium Village Project.

“Using the money from the various businesses I am involved in, I managed to buy a tailoring machine, attended a tailoring course and now I have my own tailoring business,” Mpuku says proudly.

Sam Alfred of Mayinga village in the same area is also insists that the modern farming practices introduced by the project have turned fortunes for the people of the area.

“Now I use the modern method of one seed per planting station for all my maize fields and you can see the difference,” Alfred says drawing people’s attention to a poor maize field next to his where the farmer planted three seeds per planting station.

Mpuku and Alfred are just two of the over 1,000 farmers who have benefited from the Mwandama Millennium Village Project a UNDP, Millennium Promise and Earth Institute initiative.

In partnership with government of Malawi, the Millennium Village Project was started to demonstrate and scientifically document that community-based low cost and integrated interventions can enable impoverished rural areas to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. 

Millennium villages are units of 1000 households reaching roughly 5000 people who benefit from different development initiatives in the fields of agriculture, health, education and entrepreneurship among others.

In Zomba, the project provides an agricultural input package of two 50 kgs bags of fertilizer and 10 kgs of hybrid maize seed for every 0.4 hectares of land. The inputs are given to the farmers without the need for an upfront payment.

For efficient use of the inputs, the project also provides agricultural extension service support through the collaboration of government agricultural extension workers and the project’s Agricultural Coordinator.

Since the project started, the area has produced yields that are above national average, a great contrast to the 45 percent below national average the area was producing before the project was initiated.

Closely linked to the agricultural inputs programme is the school and vulnerable groups feeding programme where farmers contribute two 50 kg bags of maize to be used by the programme.

“Last year the community in the area contributed about 700 metric tonnes of maize to support the school feeding programme. The feeding programmes have increased enrolment in schools under the project,” says Phelire Nkhoma, the Agricultural Coordinator for the project. An initial impact assessment indicates a 73 per cent increase in school enrolment.

The school feeding programme supports four junior schools providing pupils with Vitamin A and micronutrient fortified meals.  In water and sanitation, the programme has drilled eight boreholes serving 2,000 people and also distributes chlorine to households that are drinking water from unprotected shallow wells.

The project has also distributed 26,000 long lasting insecticide-treated bed nets in the fight against Malaria and 17,671 adults have received de-worming drugs. Voluntary testing and counselling for pregnant women and antenatal clinics are other interventions the project is implementing in the field of health.

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