MVP: The Millennium Villages Project

In 2015, the nations of the world agreed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and move humankind toward prosperity, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability. Can United Nations goals actually make a difference? The evidence is powerful and encouraging. To illustrate the progress that has been made, the visual storytellers of VII Agency, with support from the Blue Chip Foundation, have documented the Millennium Villages, a ten-year project created by economist Jeffery Sachs in ten African countries, which worked toward eliminating extreme poverty by focusing on its root causes.

VII photographed and filmed local participants in a variety of experiences—challenges endemic to the area and success stories of obstacles overcome—in Ethiopia, Ghana, Rwanda and Senegal. The goal is to show the progress that hundreds of thousands of people have made and to demonstrate to the world that ending extreme poverty is possible. These experiences can help guide the greater efforts of development organizations, governments, and the public at large.

As the world embarks on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, we have a responsibility to learn from what we have done in the past and to move toward making a sustainable future for all.

Artist Bios

Ron Haviv

Ron Haviv is an Emmy nominated and award-winning photojournalist, film director, and co-founder of the photo agency VII, dedicated to documenting conflict and raising about human rights issues around the globe.

Haviv has produced an unflinching record of the injustices of war and his photography has had singular impact. His work in the Balkans, which spanned over a decade of conflict, was used as evidence to indict and convict war criminals at the international tribunal in The Hague. President George H.W. Bush cited Haviv’s chilling photographs documenting paramilitary violence in Panama as one of the reasons for the 1989 American intervention.

His first photography book, “Blood and Honey: A Balkan War Journal”, was called “One of the best nonfiction books of the year,” by The Los Angeles Times and “A chilling but vastly important record of a people’s suffering,” by Newsweek. His other monographs are “Afghanistan: The Road to Kabul”, “Haiti: 12 January 2010” and “The Lost Rolls” described by The Washington Post as “ The magical photos recovered from over 200 lost rolls of film… An odd family photo album in which the kin are the people and places that have defined global politics and culture in the past quarter century.” As a result Haviv created the national public archive, “Lost Rolls America”, preserving memories and images from previously undeveloped rolls of exposed film from the American public.

Haviv co-created and managed multi-platform projects for Doctors Without Borders’ “DR Congo: The Forgotten War” and “Starved for Attention”, UNICEF’s “Child Alert for Darfur and Sri Lanka” and the International Committee of the Red Cross’s “World at War”.

Haviv is the central character in six documentary films, including National Geographic Explorer’s Freelance in a World of Risk. He has provided expert analysis and commentary on ABC News, BBC, CNN, NPR, MSNBC, NBC News, GMA and The Charlie Rose Show and written Op-Eds for The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Haviv is the co-founder and director of The VII Foundation. He is currently co-directing two documentary films, Biography of a Photo and Picasso of Harlem.
Ed Kashi

Ed Kashi is a critically acclaimed photojournalist who uses photography, filmmaking, and social media to explore geopolitical and social issues. A dedicated educator and mentor to photographers around the world, Kashi lectures frequently on visual storytelling, human rights, and the world of media.

A Contributing Photographer to the VII Foundation since 2010, Kashi has been recognized for his complex imagery and its compelling rendering of the human condition. His early adoption of hybrid visual storytelling has produced a number of influential short films and in 2015 he was named Multimedia Photographer of the Year by Pictures of the Year International.

His work has appeared in National Geographic, Open Society Foundations, The New Yorker, MSNBC, GEO, Human Rights Watch, MediaStorm, NBC.com, The New York Times Magazine, Oxfam, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and TIME. His work has been published and exhibited worldwide, receiving numerous awards and honors, and he has published nine books of his photography.
Gary Knight

Gary Knight writes, “The most meaningful part of my professional life has not changed in 25 years, wherever my career has taken me. The one constant has been my fascination and love for being out there in the world immersed in—and sharing—the lives of others.”
Danny Wilcox Frazier

Danny Wilcox Frazier focuses his work on marginalized communities across the United States. Frazier has photographed people struggling to survive the economic shift that has devastated rural communities throughout America. His work acknowledges isolation and neglect, while also celebrating perseverance and strength.

Organizations

The VII Foundation

The VII Foundation’s mission is to transform visual journalism by empowering new voices and creating stories that advocate change. In a world where beliefs and actions are increasingly out-of-sync with facts and realities, transforming visual journalism is an urgent task. Education is at the heart of The VII Foundation. To deliver our mission, we have an educational stream of three programs – VII Academy, VII Community (in partnership with PhotoWings), and VII Insider (in partnership with PhotoWings).