Kumasi, Oct 23, GNA - A 16-member Advisory Board for the Millennium Villages Project (MVP), tasked with the responsibility of ensuring the sustainability of the Project through best practices, to enable it to be replicated in other parts of the country has been inaugurated. Mr Kofi Opoku Manu, Ashanti Regional Minister, chairs the Board that draws its membership from the Manso-Nkwanta Traditional Council, Food and Agriculture Ministry, Ghana Health Services, Crops Research Institute, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), World Food Programme (WFP), Parliament, Local Government and Rural Development Ministry, the Association of Ghana Industries, Feeder Roads and the Water and Sanitation Agency. The MVP is an integrated community-level development strategy to end extreme poverty, working directly with communities, non-governmental organizations and national governments. In Ghana, Bonsaaso in the Amansie West District, was selected for the United Nation's sponsored Project and has under its cluster, 30 contiguous rural communities.

Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda are the other sub-Saharan Africa countries where the Villages Project has been launched.

Dr Amadou Niang, Regional Director of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs') Centre on the MVP International Perspective, performed the inaugural ceremony. He announced that the project period of the Bonsaaso MVP, started in February 2006, and should have ended in 2011, has been extended by five years. Already, insti tutional structures have been developed for increased food production, access to quality health care, clean water, primary education and environmental sanitation. Dr. Niang spoke of the need for Government to show more interest and commitment to the project to uplift the lives of majority of the country's rural poor.

Mr. Shigeki Komatsubara, Deputy Country Director, UNDP, said it was important to ensure that the gains of the Project were sustained and spread across the entire nation. Mr Opoku Manu said he was impressed with the significant progress brought to the people in the beneficiary communities. "It is very re-assuring to hear impressive testimonies from community members about the transformational changes the project is making in their lives. He said the MVP has proved to be a comprehensive and integrated model for achieving the MDGs' and need to be replicated in other deprived districts in Ghana. 23 Oct. 09