The SVP's main objective is to reduce extreme poverty in the selected cluster of villages in the poorest countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, with the help of low-cost sustainable, community-driven and high-impact multi-sectoral development interventions that are tailored to the villages' specific needs and designed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the end of 2015.
Giving an update about the progress of MDGs, Bashir Omar Fadlallah, director of IFSD said, 99 percent of the multi-dimensionally poor in Sub-Sahara face at least on environmental deprivation (water, sanitation or cooking fuel), more than 90 percent of them lack access to modern cooking fuel, more than 85 percent lack access to improved sanitation, and nearly half of the households spend more than 30 minutes a day collecting water.
He noted that SVP was meant to create a model and prove to the governments that MDGs can be achieved with the help of targeted interventions in critical areas. "In the first phase, inspired by the IDB vision 2020, we launched the SVP in Sudan and Chad last year," he said.
As part of the IDB plans to reinforce the importance of MDGs and finding ways and means to achieve them in the sub-Sahara, the ISFD seminar organized as a side event of the 37th Annual Meeting of the IDB concluded last Thursday in Sudan, the seminar came as a strong reminder.
Addressing the seminar, IDB President Ahmed Muhammad Ali said the IDB was doing everything to fight poverty and hunger in Sub-Sahara.
He also stressed the need for greater cooperation among the institutions, governments, civil society organization and the private sector with a view to achieving the MDGs in Sub-Sahara.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs, director of Earth Institute at Columbia University, who was a keynote speaker in the seminar, also spoke about the importance of inclusive development and shared the experience of Millennium Villages Project, which has benefited large numbers of villages across Sub-Sahara. Sachs also stressed that MDGs are achievable if aid is channeled through integrated development models like the MVP.
