families, which must have children of primary to junior secondary school age but cannot afford to put them in school, must guarantee to enroll them into school for the family to continue accessing the payments. At the end of one year, a bulk sum of money was released to a representative of the family for him or her to start a business and continue to maintain the children in school. 6.2.5 The NAPEP Village Economic Development Solution (VEDS) was another plank in the fight against poverty, with a niche in the SMEs sector as the hub for industrial development. The programme was used to encourage the establishment of small and medium enterprises, known as Anchor Projects, in the rural communities, based on the community’s comparative advantage in the production or availability of the major input demand of the enterprises. 6.2.6 Nigeria’s population and budgetary constraints posed a great challenge to NAPEP in its efforts at making substantive impact in poverty eradication. A close look at relevant indicators in the country shows that the efforts of Government in all the sectors have started yielding positive results. For example, the UNDP 2011 Human Development Report released in November 2011 showed an improvement in Nigeria’s human development index from 0.423 in 2010 to 0.459 in 2011. 6.2.7 Government in its efforts to achieve sustainable economic development, is making more efforts at improving the situation so as to achieve the target of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) as regards poverty reduction. Government is also making efforts at harmonizing all the agencies involved in the eradication of poverty in Nigeria in order to instill efficiency and effectiveness in the pursuit of their mandates. 6.2.8 The State Governments are also addressing the issue of poverty as they consider peculiar or specific to their social environment. An example of such is the Mother and Child Care Initiative in Ebonyi State, where the State Government takes the responsibility for the health problem of vulnerable women and children, with special emphasis on women suffering from Vesicovaginal Fistula (VVF). 74