MEC and the Millennium Fellowship
When you hear about the UN or anything related to it in the MEC, the first among the lot that pops up into our mind are ASWIN SHANIL, Harinarayanan Shaji, Jairam R Prabhu and few more. This time, these 3, along with nine more have achieved something truly remarkable known as the Millennium Fellowship.
Guessing what the last two words of the previous line mean? Well, it’s like a course. Technically, the Millennium Fellowship is a semester-long leadership development program that convenes, challenges, and celebrates student leadership for UN goals. It was launched in the year 2018 and has positively impacted the lives of 393,449 people across 13 nations, with the help of 402 Millennium Fellows, till date. They have successfully advanced in all the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
The Govt. Model Engineering College has proudly become one among the only 12 campuses in Asia, to be selected for the Millennium Fellowship programme, conducted collaboratively by the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) and Millennium Campus Network (MCN). From over a thousand campuses across 135 nations worldwide that applied for the session, only 6% were selected to host Fellows for the Class of 2019. The college and the MEC MUNSoc is delighted to present their 12 Millennium Fellows, who have been selected to directly work with the UNAI and MCN.
The SDG that our Millennium Fellows have taken up is the 17th one, conflict resolution. From August through December, Millennium Fellows take action to help make the Sustainable Development Goals and United Nations Academic Impact Principles, a reality. Fellows’ Projects are projected to positively impact the lives of people worldwide. The proposed Fellowship projects are often bold and innovative. For example, at Indian Institute of Technology, Madras in Chennai, India; Fellows are advancing SDG 4 — quality education — by repurposing wasted paper and producing eco-friendly notebooks to be distributed to students who cannot afford it, across public schools in India.
Being the campus director of the fellowship and the secretary of MUNSoc, Jairam says “The Millennium Fellowship is something big for the MUNSoc club and the college as a whole. With this Fellowship, we believe to bring in changes to the society especially in the field of spreading more awareness about the functioning of the UN and the UN sustainable development goals (SDG’s)”. The Fellows are planning to address climate change via this initiative too.
Ramu Damodaran, the Chief of the United Nations Academic Impact has got a lot to say regarding this. “When we created the United Nations Academic Impact to foster a culture of intellectual social responsibility, we considered ‘intellect’ not as something remote or esoteric, but rather as a quality innate in every thinking individual. Our collaboration with MCN will allow students to demonstrate how the wisdom and thought they invest in their formal curriculum can be extended to a greater purpose of the common good, lending their strengths to their communities and their world and, in turn, is enriched by them.”
A lot more to learn and even more to achieve, I wish all the 12 Millennium Fellow listed in the picture the very best for the upcoming endeavours!
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