I am spending my summer in Sauri, Kenya. As a Masters in Development Practice student (MDP), we have a 12-week field training in a Millennium Village. The first 5 weeks consists of rotations in Agriculture/Business Development, Education, Health, Infrastructure, and Community Development. After the rotations, we will work as a team to draw up a [...]
Monitoring and Evaluation is Hard*
A primary component of the Millennium Villages Project education strategy is to improve the quality of education. But are MVP interventions such as school feeding programs, classroom construction, and teacher training truly having an impact on student performance? On Wednesday I attended a planning meeting for an evaluation designed to measure just that. The standardized [...]
A Week with the Sauri, Kenya Education Team
Originally posted at karibusauri.wordpress.com My first week’s rotation at the Sauri Millennium Village was with the education sector. In three short days I observed MVP sponsored computer labs, school feeding program kitchens, gender separated latrines, a monitoring and evaluation planning meeting, rainwater harvesting, school livestock; the list goes on. The education team is constantly on the [...]
Sustainable Financing in the Mbola MVP?
The MDP Tanzania Team finished our first week here in Tabora town and the Mbola Millennium Village. After spending an orientation day with the Business Enterprise and Development Coordinator and learning about The Mbola Millennium Savings & Credit Cooperative Society (SACCOS) as well as the MVP input credit scheme I am left with both questions and perhaps some answers about future financing prospects beyond MVP.
Take MDP Courses in the USA, Practice in Nigeria, Graduate in Costa Rica.
As a student, imagine taking courses from experts at the Earth Institute and the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, living in Nigeria for two months while helping villages problem-solve the complex challenges of sustainable development, and graduating from your home institution in Costa Rica. Picture meeting at a university campus every [...]
