Jeffrey Sachs' discussion on the progress of the Millennium Villages PART 1

Living in New York gives you remarkable and once in a lifetime opportunities. For instance, in the past two weeks I have had the privilege of hearing Jeffrey Sachs, a prominent economist, speak twice. Not only twice, but each time on something he is passionate about: Economics and the world's poor.

Today, we are in the middle of the 5 year mark of the Millennium project.

Sachs explained that the real challenges to development lie in providing safe child-birth, climate change, areas of engineering, and other technologies. Not particularly in the economics field.
Although it seems like big things to tackle, Sachs was encouraging that there are solutions to be found.

Billions are trapped in poverty and barely have enough to survive today, let alone think about what they need to survive the week. Even if they do know what they need, which Sachs indicated that a lot of villages do, they cannot afford it. So, the poorest of the poor know what they need and cannot afford them while the richest of the rich are too blind to offer them.

Sachs claims we have this mentality, that if you are poor, it is your own fault. I know, personally, I have heard this. There are numerous of homeless people lining the streets of New York. Some look lazy while others do look sincerely desperate. It is easy to turn a blind eye and figure they can help themselves. This is not always the case. I feel like the only way to disprove this thought process is to see the poorest of the poor. In most places such as Africa, India, and China, it is a cyclical disease that plagues generations. It is a lifestyle in which often times kids know no different not necessarily a choice. Talk to the orphan in Nairobi and he will tell you he wants to be a pilot. Don't dare put him and the guy with the change cup on 34th street in the same category.

With 250 experts, worldwide, the Millennium team put together a 16 volume set of recommendations for the U.N.. Hopeful, Jeffrey Sachs said they were still waiting for that $100 billion check to start implementing these recommendations. Jokingly, he said he is still waiting for that check but supposedly if you are a bank you can get about $700 billion. Too bad that is not a joke though, huh?

One thing that I liked was that they were looking for a way to support this challenge in an innovative way. Good advice in anything and everything we do.

These villages for the Millennium project are made up of 5,000 people each. He mentioned that this was their definition of a village, one that may vary from others.

In talking with one prospective supporter, the man told Sachs that he was not sure if the project would work or not but it deserved to be tried. Today there are a dozen countries and soon it will be expanded to 16 countries.

More to come later...