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ABOUT THE MILLENNIUM FELLOWSHIP - CLASS OF 2018

United Nations Academic Impact and MCN are proud to partner on the Millennium Fellowship. In the three months the application was open in 2018, students applied to join the Class of 2018 on 285 campuses across 57 nations. 30 campuses worldwide (just 11%) were selected to host the 402 Millennium Fellows in the global pilot this year.

The Class of 2018 is bold, innovative, and inclusive. During the Millennium Fellowship, Millennium Fellows' dedicated 48,785 hours and their 214 unique projects positively impacted the lives of 393,449 people worldwide.

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UNITED NATIONS ACADEMIC IMPACT AND MCN PROUDLY PRESENT ATULYA DORA-LASKEY, A MILLENNIUM FELLOW FOR THE CLASS OF 2018.

Alma College | Michigan, United States | Advancing SDG 2 and SDG 12 & UNAI 1

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" I've always loved the cooperative spirit of the UN and excited to use it to work on my cooperative! "

Millennium Fellowship Project: Big Box Farm Project

The Big Box Farm Project is aimed at ensuring year-round access to sustainable and nutritious food by converting an abandoned former K-Mart building into an indoor aquaponic facility. The project is operating in an area of the Midwest where there is higher level of poverty and increase access to nutritional food will play a key role in increasing community health and wellness as well as to stimulate the local economy and better the environment by promoting shopping locally. Additionally, the project focus on the reutilization of existing infrastructure.

The projected outcomes of our project by December of 2018 include operating a small scale aquaponics system to serve as a model for our long term goal of a full scale aquaponics facility. This small scale model will allow for experiments to be run on how to most efficiently run the system, as well as better plan for the operating cost and factors of a full scale system. This also provides an opportunity to bring campus and community together through outreach events. Building this relationship is one of the most important focuses for the project moving forward. Another focus will be on fundraising efforts for the purchase of the K-Mart facility and equipment.

The long term goal is to create a full scale indoor farming facility and food network for mid-Michigan. This network will provide nutritional local food for large hubs like schools and hospitals as well as for household consumption. The team aims to raise community health and ensure access to nutritional food no matter a person’s income level.

About the Millennium Fellow

Atulya had the privilege of not only attending Alma College but growing up in Alma as well. Even though he spent a lot of his time indoors, he was still able to see the problems plaguing his community, namely the problems of a lack of small business, nutrition and poverty. To Atulya, these were three ugly issues that seemed to fall hand and hand, each of them making the others worse and taking their toll on his peers. Now he is committed to working on the Big Box Farm to help alleviate these issues and break the cycle.

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