Millennium Villages Project

Documenting MVP: A VII Foundation and Blue Chip Exhibition

Blue Chip Foundation and VII Foundation have created five short films and a two-volume book series, which amplify the voices of local people for whom MVP has achieved a measurable difference.
The opportunity for individuals to share their own stories and their involvement with the project spreads and amplifies the diverse capacities of MVP.
As we enter the New Age of Sustainable Development, one of the project’s priorities is to develop a civic dialogue around key environmental, social, health, and human rights issues of the utmost importance. MVP is designed to advance far more comprehensive solutions to the challenges of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) .
The two-volume book, with excerpts written by Bono, Jeff Sachs, Jennifer Gross, and Jeffery Hammer aspires to humanize the final statistics released at the culmination of the project. 
The first volume focuses on images and statistics that highlight the most significant interventions that MVP has accomplished in the villages while the second volume includes additional, previously unpublished photographs with a project evaluation by Lancet and Professor Sachs’ response and amendment.
Blue Chip Foundation and VII Foundation developed a non-linear, interactive, and widely accessible narrative to complement distribution across multiple platforms. This interactive design further encourages exploration of subject, story, and project geography from a range of perspectives and backgrounds. 

Qualitative (documentary) and quantitative (data-driven) information are simultaneously available to viewers with available photographs, documentaries, texts, oral histories, maps, and data visualizations.

Ron Haviv and Jennifer Gross collaborated in Koraro, Ethiopia. Photographer Gary Knight and Videographer Fiona Turner shot footage in Mayange, Rwanda. Danny Wilcox Frasier covered Potou, Senegal. And, Ed Kashi further collaborated with Jenn Gross in Ghana. 

The documentary has traveled to the United Nations Headquarters in the form of a museum quality exhibition held in December 2016.

A high school level curriculum is currently traveling throughout schools in the United States made possible in partnership with The William, Jeff, and Jennifer Gross Family Foundation and Generation Human Rights.

MVP’s most successful initiatives have already achieved scale throughout countries located on the African continent.  Blue Chip Foundation  is hopeful that this style of unbiased documentation will inspire other communities and governments to implement and adopt some of these practices.

The next stop is a meeting with African Leaders about future policy at the African Union in 2018. A follow-on exhibit of the show will tour throughout the capital cities of Ghana, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Senegal: countries previously documented and covered by VII photographers. 

From there, several exhibitions will arrive and remain in each of the four villages serving as a permanent collection for those communities to enjoy.