The Earth Institute & Global Institute

The Earth Institute at Columbia University and the Global Institute at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine will join forces to fight poverty in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. The partners are working together to establish the country's first Millennium Village. Started in 2004, the Millennium Villages project is a bottom-up approach using scientifically sound interventions to tackle some of the toughest challenges of extreme poverty. Start-up funding for the village has been provided through a $1.4 million grant from The Green Family Foundation.

The collaboration will provide increased capability to fulfill the Millennium Development Goals -- clear targets for reducing poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women -- by 2015. Currently, the Millennium Villages project is working in 79 villages in 10 African countries. By combining expertise in science and policy with local knowledge, Millennium Villages address all the major challenges of poverty -- hunger, disease, lack of safe drinking water, and the absence of essential infrastructures, for example -- to transform people living in poverty to become thriving individuals and communities.

The partnership between The Earth Institute and the Global Institute will bring the Millennium Villages to the Western Hemisphere for the first time. The Earth Institute will lead the policy team for the project, and the Global Institute will coordinate community-level programs.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management, said, "This exciting collaboration with the University of Miami and The Green Family Foundation enables all of us to work with our neighbors in Haiti to support their urgent needs in health, agriculture, and economic development.

“With the support of this project, Millennium Villages in Haiti will be enabled to address the challenges of extreme poverty, disease, and hunger in a holistic and community-led manner. The partnership will also work directly with President Preval and his colleagues to help identify national-scale solutions to Haiti's many challenges. All of us in this partnership are thrilled by this opportunity to work from the grass roots to the national leadership on behalf of Haiti's economic and social development.”

Pascal J. Goldschmidt, M.D., Senior Vice President for Medical Affairs and Dean of the Miller School of Medicine, highlights the collaboration as an important milestone in the Miller School's efforts to extend health beyond frontiers and barriers. “The Miller School is honored to be joining hands with a leader such as Professor Sachs and his expert team at The Earth Institute, and to be assisting the development efforts of the Preval government. This collaboration will provide a formidable foundation to extend education, research, and patient care to our neighbors in Haiti.” 

Former ambassador to Singapore, Steven Green, and Kimberly Green, president of The Green Family Foundation stated, “We are extremely proud to provide lead funding for this project and to work alongside tremendous partners -- Global Institute at the University of Miami  and The Earth Institute at Columbia University.” Kimberly Green further said, “Our foundation shares a deep bond with Haiti, a country that we’ve supported for five years through our longstanding relationship with Project Medishare and the University of Miami. The creation of a Millennium Village is a natural expansion of the foundation’s commitment to the people of Haiti.”

The Millennium Village collaboration will also include Project Medishare for Haiti, a 501©3 non-profit co-founded by University of Miami physicians Barth Green and Arthur Fournier,  who have been developing health programs in Haiti for more than 15 years. Project Medishare was founded in 1994, and since that time has been dedicated to improving the health of the Haitian people by establishing health services and infrastructure in communities throughout the central plateau of Haiti.

About the Earth Institute at Columbia University
The Earth Institute at Columbia University brings together talent from throughout the university to address complex issues facing the planet and its inhabitants, with particular focus on sustainable development and the needs of the world's poor. Under the direction of international economist Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, The Earth Institute supports pioneering projects in the biological, engineering, social, and health sciences, while actively encouraging interdisciplinary projects - often combining natural and social sciences - in pursuit of solutions to real world problems. 

About the Global Institute at the University of Miami
The Global Institute aims to mobilize global collaborations in the pursuit of health and prosperity for all human beings. The institute seeks to generate new knowledge and apply interdisciplinary solutions to impact the most challenging health and development dilemmas of the millennium and contribute to the fulfillment of the Millennium Development Goals. The Global Institute is led by the Miller School of Medicine and supported by schools throughout the University of Miami.

About The Green Family Foundation
The Green Family Foundation supports programs that seek to reduce inequalities caused by extreme poverty and aims to ultimately foster self-sufficiency, at home and abroad. The Green Family Foundation established the Green Family Health Initiative at the University of Miami in 2003, which supports Project Medishare’s community health program in Haiti’s central plateau. The success of this program has acted as a catalyst in the formation of the partnership with The Earth Institute and the extension of programs to facilitate the establishment of the first Millennium Village in Haiti.

About Project Medishare for Haiti
Project Medishare for Haiti, Inc., a 501c3 non-profit registered in the state of Florida, was founded in 1995 by Drs. Barth Green and Arthur Fournier from the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine. It is an organization dedicated to sharing its human and technical resources with its Haitian partners in the quest to achieve quality healthcare for all. This mission is accomplished through a continuing commitment to rural communities by establishing and funding sustainable programs, training Haitian physicians, nurses and healthcare professionals and providing technology, supplies and equipment to its clinic in Thomonde and other affiliated programs throughout Haiti.