As Europe's Year for Development 2015 gets underway, We travel far and wide to bring you the broad landscape of the EU's aid efforts with its international partners.

Reporter: Europe's global development aid

2015 is the European Year  for Development.

The European Union may be  the biggest donor in the world,

but Europeans don't really know  who the beneficiaries are.

She deals with development  in the European Parliament.

Last year, something like  over 60% of total global aid

80% of the public in the EU  think we should do development aid,

but when they were asked,  'What does the EU do?',

50% said they knew nothing or very little  about what the EU was doing.

So the idea is to make more visible  this priority area for the European Union.

2015 will focus on  a particular angle each month,

peace and security in May,  or food security in October.

To discuss it, we met stakeholders  in this development policy

and we showed them examples of projects  funded by the European Union.

In Myanmar Thè Mon can't afford  school equipment for her three children.

I'd like them to get an education because  I never had the opportunity to go to school,

In the 25 poorest districts of the country

Unicef has provided  school books and textbooks.

We provide materials for children  to learn in the schools

and we also train teachers  in effective methodologies.

And for children who have to work  a specific programme has been set up.

With these children, we teach  reading, writing, and mathematics.

to send their children  for two hours a day, after work.

What does Philippe Cori from Unicef think?  He cooperates with the EU on this project.

The thing that strikes you is  the dignity that you see in this programme

in the children, the parents, the partners  in the community, the teachers,

also those running  community social services.

The whole challenge  of this kind of programme...

Unicef supports it  in partnership with the EU.

..is to bring all the stakeholders together.

And our future is the young people of today.

We headed to Burkina Faso. This project  shows several of the priorities for 2015,

Here, to counter the rural exodus  of young people,

training in agriculture,  livestock and fish farming is given,

I studied at the centre  and finished in 2005.

At the end of my training, I received  a loan of 575,000 CFA francs.

I purchased chickens, sheep, goats,  and then repaid my loan.

Since Amadou has returned, he can treat  chickens and livestock when they are sick.

With his livestock, he gives those around  him new ideas for their future.

Anyone who would like to work  can now look upon him as an example.

For Laura Sullivan it's about  the fight for gender equality,

Most of those who are living in poverty  in the developing world are farmers,

and very many of them are women farmers.

This video shows a focus on the capacities,  the agency, of those people,

particularly women farmers, to support  them, to train them, to empower them.

Access to healthcare wherever you are  will be the theme for April.

In Ethiopia 85% of the population  live in rural regions.

So local health posts have had to be set up

and indigenous people trained in healthcare.

The health post is open to everyone  and I am there to help the patients.

When I do house calls  I am doing prevention work.

To do this, in my medical kit,  I take the necessary literature

to talk about transmitted diseases  and family planning.

Here women generally give birth at home,  with the risk of losing their life.

When you give birth you lose a lot of blood.  We lost many women during childbirth.

women didn't wash until the fourth  or fifth day, or even the seventh day.

Today, women are aware of  how important hygiene is.

We now conduct regular tests  during the pregnancy.

I am proud that we have no more  maternal mortality in the village

In all these projects the main aim  is always the fight against poverty.

In 2013 the EU and its Member States  contributed 56.5 billion euros to it.

The European Parliament's job  is to make the legislation

which makes  EU development policy possible.

It's to scrutinise how the money's spent  and to make sure it's spent wisely,

and to set the budget for development aid.

But the difficulty lies in  the diversity of the protagonists.

We're not always very good  at mobilising that expertise

and there is still too much competition,  I would say,

between the Commission and Member  States or individual Member States.

in humanitarian action  because you have to be efficient.

I must say that the efforts  made by the European Union

in the humanitarian response  to the Ebola crisis

were really encouraging in terms of  coordination, coherency, acting together.

2015 is also the cut-off date  for the Millennium Development Goals

defined by the UN in 2000,  which the Union also committed to.

For the post-2015 goals it's the turn  of sustainable development.

The Sustainable Development Goals  are a major step forward.

They actually unify  the question of sustainability,

of living in a planet with limited resources,

in a planet where every one of us, I think,

feels the environmental constraints  wherever we live, not only in the South.

The new set has four, I think,  on environment.