The Coordinator of Mayange Millennium Village Project (MVP), Donald Ndahiro, has commended residents for curtailing chronic hunger to having a bumper harvest in the last four years of the project.

"By applying targeted, science-based interventions and maximizing community leadership and participation, the villagers of Mayange have produced 100 tonnes of grain in stock in each cell.”

"We are now safe from hunger, and farmers are now diversifying into high-value crops including cowpeas, cassava, groundnuts, mushrooms, and chickpeas,” he noted.

MVP was inaugurated in ten developing countries to accelerate achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

Ndahiro emphasized that Mayange’s success story provides clear evidence that MDGs are achievable in least developed countries if the project commitments are met on time.

In a related development, the Coordinator also noted great improvements in the health sector, citing that the MVP founded health clinic is already receiving many patients and has new rooms, trained staff, necessary equipment and enough stocks of medicine.

"The clinic is currently receiving close to 150 patients per day from an initial 10 visitors, the Mayange cluster’s community health workers are trained in reproductive health and a malaria treatment program to diagnose and treat the disease at the household level is progressing,” he revealed.

Mayange Sector’s Executive Secretary, Francis Nkurunziza, also noted that the area was chosen by MVP due to its sporadic drought to be a concept project on which the world would tell the success of MDGs.

"At first, residents were fleeing the area due to famine, children could not go school as the area was running short of school buildings, Malaria was a big threat to the population, but today the story is different,” Nkurunziza added.

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