The Chiefs and people of three districts in the Northern and Upper East regions have lauded the interventions introduced by the SADA Millennium Village Projects (SADA MVP).

The projects are in the West Mamprusi and Mamprusi Moaduri Districts in the Northern Region and the Builsa South district in the Upper East Region.

The Chiefs and people made the commendation at separate durbars held in thirty-four communities in the three districts.

The durbars were aimed at dialoguing and interacting with beneficiary communities, and to give them the opportunity to air their views freely on the project activities as well as afford the community members opportunity to propose various options, debate and arrive at workable solutions that would enhance the project implementation, ownership and its sustainability.

Over the past two years, SADA- MVP, in union with communities and other stakeholders, including the Ghana Health Service, (GHS), Ghana Education Service (GES), District Agriculture Development Units (DADU) and the districts assemblies have implemented various activities such as the provision of education and health facilities and agriculture support.

It also includes capacity building activities for various groups in the 35 communities in the West Mamprusi, Mamprugu Moaduri and the Builsa South Districts where it is operating.

In an address read for him, Naa Professor John S. Nabila, Paramount Chief of the Wulugu Traditional Area and President of the National House of Chiefs stressed that one of the significant impacts the SADA MVP interventions had made in the communities was the curbing of maternal and infant mortality in the area.

He stated that hitherto, many pregnant women used to go through serious health complications during child birth due to the long distances they had to travel to major health facilities in Walewale, Tamale or Bolgatanga to access health care.

He said with the SADA MVP’s interventions in the health sector and the provision of ambulances, the building and renovation of clinics at strategic areas in the communities, the phenomenon had reduced drastically.

“The provision of the ambulances at vantage points in the project cluster to transport pregnant women during labour to major health centres, which are far away, to deliver is a very useful intervention and must be commended”.

The construction and renovation of clinics including the provision of medical equipment to some of these clinics and health posts has also brought health care to the door steeps of the people”, Professor Nabila stressed.

Another remarkable feat chalked by the project was the building and renovation of schools including the provision of computers and school uniforms to pupils in the areas.

They also indicated that SADA-MVP’s support in the area of agriculture had helped improve the livelihoods of the people and indicated that the provision of the tractor services and farm inputs had contributed significantly to the cultivation of crops such as maize and beans.

The Assembly Member for Kpasenkpe electoral area, Mr Seth Panwum, who is also the Presiding Member for the West Mamprusi District Assembly, noted that SADA-MVP interventions in the area of education had helped improve the study of ICT in schools in selected project communities and noted that hitherto the pupils in the area had not seen computers, stressing “they can now learn ICT and write it at the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) level like their colleagues elsewhere”

The chiefs and people lauded the SADA-MVP interventions, and called on Management of the project and government to construct more roads to open up other villages including the provision of electricity and water.

Mr Edwin Batiir, Community Mobilization and Institutions Coordinator of SADA-MVP, said the successes and failures of every people centred development intervention laid in the hands of its beneficiaries and noted that it was against this backdrop that SADA-MVP regarded project beneficiaries as the most important entities.

He stressed that the project objectives could only be attained and sustained if beneficiaries played active part in project activities from the implementation, monitoring and evaluation phases hence the project’s relentless effort at ensuring that it achieved success.

The SADA MVP is the result of collaboration between the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) and Millennium Promise (MP), with funding from the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development.

The SADA-MVP is guided by a partnership between the Earth Institute at Columbia University and Millennium Promise, working closely with communities, governments, companies, multilateral organizations, and non-governmental organizations around the world.

It is explicitly aimed at implementing the Millennium Development Goals and supporting economic development at the local level.

The overall goal of SADA-MVP is to assist a specific population in the rural northern savannah belt of Ghana in achieving the Millennium Development Goals and to help establish a robust local economy that can sustain and extend the progress made during the project life