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.
UNITED NATIONS ACADEMIC IMPACT AND MCN PROUDLY PRESENT SOYEMI TOLUWALASHE , A MILLENNIUM FELLOW AND CAMPUS DIRECTOR FOR THE CLASS OF 2018.
Lagos State University | Lagos, Nigeria | Advancing SDG 4 & UNAI 3
" I'm m excited to be a Millennium Fellow because it's an opportunity to impact people and promote the SDG goals in passionate about. "
Millennium Fellowship Project: Protostar Initiative
Protostar Initiative is an social enterprise whose mission is to advocate against the discrimination and stigmatization of people living with mental disabilities and leveraging technology to reach out to special homes and disabled people by encouraging them to seek professional help from psychologists, psychiatrist etc. The initiative’s goal is to organize a conference by October. The maiden edition of Protostar Conference 2018 aims to bring together students, clinical researchers and special teachers and social entrepreneurs to exchange and share their experiences and even researches on all aspects on mental health. They intend to organize an event centered around raising awareness on mental health issues from different perspectives of people who have made significant changes in the field.
Project Update: Our Mental health conference was a blast! Over 150 people were in attendance from lecturers to medical students and non-profit leaders. Our success at the conference made us start another project. Project TeenAware. In Nigeria, mental health, is a neglected topic among youths and adolescent. The rate of depression and suicide is still on a high yet there are lesser structures designed to cater for mental health of people. After our research last year, we realized that that 50-70 % of all mental health conditions starts from teenage-hood. That's why our projects this year involves the training of teenagers
Our latest project involves the training of 30 teens in a rural community in Lagos on mental health first aid. It would be a 3 week intensive program starting in August. Our curriculum includes making them understand the effects of stigma, understand realities and bust myths concerning mental health as well as effectively support anyone in a mental distress. The 30 teenagers would eventually be ambassadors and start out Mental Health clubs in their secondary schools.
We have already started our project and looking to scaling!
About the Millennium Fellow
Toluwalashe Soyemi is a medical student with an undying passion to positively re-orientate those around him; creating a bridge between potential and performance of people. Toluwalashe has over 2 years of experience in health based social entrepreneurship. Currently, Toluwalashe is the Co-founder of Protostar, an organization whose mission is to advocate against the discrimination and stigmatization of people living with developmental disabilities. Through its website at www.protostar.com.ng, Protostar develops blog contents, creates link between donors, volunteers and special homes to disabled people and encourage people to get professional help to psychologists, psychiatrists. Over the years, Tolu has volunteered and worked with several organizations including those advocates youth empowerment and capacity building including Africa Development Initiative, He has worked with international organizations as well as national brand social enterprises such as Campus Director, HultPrize @ Lagos State University 2018, Intern,Green Campus Initiative, Media Intern at Health News Nigeria, Local Coordinator, Africa Students For Liberty (ASFL) amongst many others. He is a strong believer of diversity and his motto is: UBUNTU, I am because we are...
