Building Capacity for Monitoring and Evaluation in the Millennium Villages Project in Ghana

The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) form a blueprint for reducing poverty and serve to align the international community toward a common vision of poverty eradication. Ghana’s dedication to poverty eradication coupled with the magnitude of extreme poverty compelled the Millennium Village Project (MVP) to open a site in the Amansie West District of the Ashanti Region. A cluster of approximately thirty-one rural villages, home to roughly 30,000 residents, was launched as a Millennium Village site in January 2006, known within the project as the Bonsaaso village cluster. The objective of the workshop was to assess participatory approaches to a monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) system, to identify elements of an effective PM&E system and to provide recommendations for the MVP site in Ghana. The investigation included a detailed case-study overview of the agriculture sector, given that most community members cultivate mainly low-yielding crops and cashcrops.