Jeffery Sachs TakePart

Jeffrey Sachs is an economist and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and he's working hard to eradicate extreme poverty. His plan to end poverty seems pretty obvious- harness the financial power of the wealthy to help those in need. Should be easy...right?Sachs is founder and co-President of the Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending extreme poverty and hunger. His most recent effort is the Millennium Villages project, which offers an innovative model for helping rural African communities lift themselves out of extreme poverty.

Sachs launched the program in Sauri, Kenya, in 2004 with a $5 million gift from a philanthropist and the grand goal of eradicating poverty in Africa by deploying private funds from the developed world. He then raised $100 million more $50 million from financier George Soros and the rest from individual donors (one of whom has loaned Sachs the jet we're flying in). Like the 79 other Millennium Villages, Toya is to receive $1.75 million over five years, which will go toward seed and fertilizer. The money will also go to water pumps, schools, health clinics, lunch programs for students, and antimalarial mosquito nets for every villager, as well as to power production, connectivity (cell phones and the Internet), and basic business institutions like microfinancing and farmer cooperatives. It's an all-or-nothing effort to end extreme poverty along the lines of the UN's Millennium Goals, established in 2000. [Conde Nast Traveler]

takepart and visit millenniumvillages.org for ways to help Sachs end poverty. Also, check out the full article from Conde Nast Traveler at http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/articles/12961?pageNumber=1 to learn more about the project and Jeffery Sachs