Summary

DescriptionMillennium Villages, Jharkhand.webm	English: Millenium Village Project Project implemented by Welthungerhilfe (Germany), Pravah and CWS (India) Deogarh district Jharkhand, India March 2010 Co-financed by the European Union On YouTube ⇒ Millenium Village Project - playlist
Source	Own work
Author	Rahulkepapa
Other versions	On YouTube ⇒ Millenium Village Project - playlist

Dilip Kumar - The main factor of poverty is the poverty existing in people’s minds – for instance, a farmer with 10 acres land who says that he has no food for the next two months. People’s mind set will need to be changed.

Speaker Jharkhand is a state in North India. It is very rich in natural resources and very poor in terms of the quality of life of its people. Agriculture in Jharkhand could bring much more prosperity if people knew how to better utilize their resources.

Babita Sinha If we belong to that generation that has got the capacity to utilize resources, and can do something to show to others how to do it, then … we can do it !

Speaker The Millennium Village project implemented by Welthungerhilfe in 26 Villages of the Deoghar district in Jharkhand is a typical example of international cooperation for rural development: it receives funds from the European Union; it was conceived and designed by a German NGO, and it is locally implemented by small Indian NGOs.

‪Bernhard Hoeper‬ I belong to a German organization that is called Welthungerhilfe or Agro-action and we decided to show in 15 different locations, all over the world, that change is possible, according to the Millennium Development Goals.

Speaker As most rural development projects, this initiative also aims at raising local capacities in agriculture, promoting basic education and improving infrastructures. The development workers implementing this project are making an effort to reconstruct the social fabric by involving the whole community in participated policy planning processes.

Babita Sinha In this project we involve the community participated planning from the very beginning. The villages seat together. They make their own plans. They get involved identifying new ways of looking at the common welfare of the village. And they take their part of responsibility for making improvements. All this comes from them. We address the MDGs not from the United Nations level, but we adopt a bottom-up approach.

‪Rajesh Kumar Jha‬ We organize a village development course where people participate voluntary. They share with others the some of the profit they obtain from the course activities. Then they rotate the funds.

Speaker What is unique in this project is the effort to bring the policy perspectives of the Millennium Development Goals, or the MDGs, much closer to the village level. In fact, in order to restructure community ties and give people self-confidence, the same commitment to remove extreme poverty, that generates cooperation at an international level, is also required at the village level.

Bernhard Hoeper‬ When I see it at the village level I see that there is progress. . It makes me very hopeful. Hope is a strange word. So to say but … change is possible.

Bernhard Hoeper‬ Of course after four years it will be not the end of the efforts. But we believe that once the program will be over after four years, that the community and its leader will be on a higher level of development awareness, from where they cannot go back any more. Think for instance at gender equality … a very touchy topic. Look at the participation of women over there. Look at the elf help groups. Talk to them. You will see how the confidence has increased. These are not wanders. These are concrete development steps. But what we do not want, and that is also a challenge, we do not want an isolated case: the kind of island where money is fueled in and bring development from outside. That will not work. You cannot buy development. Development will only work if people are convinced; and people ownership is there.

Dilip Kumar - When the people of the village will really understand that "this project is mine" that there is no problem of sustainability . The project will be viable.

Babita Sinha I have got this opportunity to live my mission and demonstrate what I believe, then … that is fine form me. It is a passion for me. If I do not do this kind of work … I will not be good at anything else.

‪Bernhard Hoeper‬ Now you may question what is the interest of the European Union. Why do they fund such kind of projects? Well. There is no vested interest. This is not money that is used to go to any side of the political game. It is really money that goes into the realization of the Millennium Development Goals.

Speacker What started out as an effort to bring the MDG policy to the marginalized populations could well bounce back to the high level policy centers, as a lesson for global decision makers, who need to learn to listen to one another and share a common purpose in our ever smaller global village.

Dilip Kumar - When somebody tells me that due to the work done by your organization, today we have eaten enough and our children are going to school, then I get peace; then I am really happy.

Licensing

I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following licenses:

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

You are free:

• to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
• to remix – to adapt the work

Under the following conditions:

• attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
• share alike – If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same or compatible license as the original.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0CC BY-SA 3.0 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 truetrue

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.htmlGFDLGNU Free Documentation Licensetruetrue

You may select the license of your choice.