Our mission
Millennium Promise is the leading international non-profit organization solely committed to supporting the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals to halve extreme poverty by 2015. Millennium Promise oversees the Millennium Villages project, which supports integrated social and business development services for more than 500,000 people in rural communities across 10 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
Our work and our goals
The Millennium Development Goals are the world's goals. They have spurred an unprecedented global agenda for partnership since they were established 10 years ago. Bill Gates has called them "the best idea for focusing the world on fighting global poverty that [he has] ever seen." They have seen remarkable progress, including a 74 percent reduction in measles deaths, 4 million people on life-saving AIDS treatment, and more than 30 million additional children in primary school in Africa alone. The success stories each have major lessons for scale up, including sound technical interventions, institutional mechanisms to deliver services, adequate finance to reach scale, and a clear focus on metrics. Ten years ago most were widely considered unachievable. Visit our site to learn more about the Millennium Development Goals.
An example of success: Reducing child mortality
Immunizations are an important tool in public health efforts to eradicate childhood diseases. One of the most successful global health initiatives in the world is a campaign to vaccinate children against measles. Led by the American Red Cross, the UN Foundation, WHO, UNICEF and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Measles Initiative has vaccinated over 600 million children since 2001, helping to reduce global measles mortality by 74% between 2000 and 2007. During the same period, measles deaths plunged by 89% in Africa alone. Estimates show that measles immunizations have helped avert almost 7.5 million deaths from the disease.
Tremendous progress is being made on reducing childhood mortality, not only through immunization campaigns, but also through the mass distribution of insecticide-treated anti-malarial bed nets and the use of other low-cost strategies. Since 1990, the global child mortality rate has declined from 90 deaths per 1,000 live births to 65 per 1,000 live births, which means approximately 10,000 fewer children are dying each day. In sub-Saharan Africa, Malawi has had the greatest success, reducing the childhood mortality rate to 100 per 1,000 births in 2008 from 225 in 1990. Ethiopia, Malawi, and Mozambique have also made strong progress. While further efforts are still required to achieve the MDG target of reducing child mortality by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015, this new data reaffirms that making such progress is indeed possible.
See more of our work at our video library on YouTube.
