Problem organizations - Millennium Village Project

Dear Colleagues

Transparency should be a norm. So I am very disappointed to be including the Millennium Village Project (MVP) of the Earth Institute at Columbia University among the problem organizations because of its very weak record of transparency.

I may be missing something, but I don't think so. I have been trying to get some useful information about the Millennium Villages, but what is publicly available is nothing more than PR (public relations) material that is suited to informing donors rather than to informing analysis of development.

From what one can understand, the MVP is getting very substantial funding from donors, and, not surprisingly, high expenditures are resulting in changes in the performance of the village. Whether or not these changes are sustainable is not clear, but the indicators are that they are not.

I have been told that the MVP is collecting a lot of data. Good. But what value does data have when it is private and secret. Columbia University and its Earth Institute seem to believe that knowledge arising from the MVP is their private property ... which might be so in strict legal terms ... but it is my understanding that the funding for the MVP comes from many sources including from agencies funded with taxpayer money (not necessarily the US taxpayer.

I was hoping to learn something from the MVP. I like the fact that it is a community centric development initiative ... but I am appalled at what the project is costing and how little information about this is available to me, and the public in general.

Appalled ...

The MVP is a very good reason why the Tr-Ac-Net Community Impact Accountancy system needs to be universally deployed.

Sincerely

Peter Burgess