ABOUT THE MILLENNIUM FELLOWSHIP - CLASS OF 2019
United Nations Academic Impact and MCN are proud to partner on the Millennium Fellowship. In the three months the application was open in 2019, over 7,000 young leaders applied to join the Class of 2019 on 1,209 campuses across 135 nations. 69 campuses worldwide (just 6%) were selected to host the 805 Millennium Fellows.
During the Millennium Fellowship, Millennium Fellows' dedicated 96,705 hours and their 422 unique projects positively impacted the lives of 564,366 people worldwide.
UNITED NATIONS ACADEMIC IMPACT AND MCN PROUDLY PRESENT OLUWATOMISIN KOLAWOLE, A MILLENNIUM FELLOW AND CAMPUS DIRECTOR FOR THE CLASS OF 2019.
University of Ibadan | Ibadan, Nigeria | Advancing SDG 3 & UNAI 3
" I am delighted to be a Millennium fellow as this would afford me the opportunity to connect and dialogue with other like minded change-makers so we can ultimately expand each other's capacity to drive more social impact in our respective communities. "
Millennium Fellowship Project: VINSIGHTE TECHNOLOGY
Visual Impairment has been a limiting, depressing and overlooked problem in Africa with little help given in the region to help the victims enjoy a better quality of life.
According to WHO’s 2010 global data report, 285 million people are visually impaired in the world and 26.2 million people suffer from visual impairment in Africa. Most of them are limited in their ability to read and move around their environment independently which has exposed them to even more hazards, limited their access to education and job opportunities, endangered their quality of life and wellbeing and brought on them undue stigmatization. Our aim at Vinsighte is to alleviate this problem.
Vinsighte designed a hand-held guiding aid called Viri and a smart reading eye-glasses called Visis which aids the visually impaired to navigate a familiar environment independently and read books conveniently.
Viri makes use of sonar technology to detect obstacles and obstructions in the path of the user and relays feedbacks via mild vibrations. Here is a short video of one of our pilot users using Viri-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LKhtqVTGYM
Visis, makes use of a camera and AI to aid the visually impaired to read conveniently by converting the texts of books to audio for them to listen to. Rudimentary prototype https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T8U8sBl5r6vsyALvs67hoUrLlLOnn6Pb/view
We have developed working prototypes which have been beta-tested and piloted with Visually impaired users in the University of Ibadan and at Omoyeni home of the visually impaired in Ibadan, Nigeria where we reached out to a total of about 70 visually impaired persons. Currently, we are working on improving our designs to ensure that our products are market fit.
Due to the great prospect our innovation has shown and the success we have achieved in development, the World Bank Group recently announced Vinsighte as one of the top 14 social impact ventures among 3100 ventures in the world. We are currently in the 2019/2020 Facebook Accelerator program, Nigeria where we have access to business and financial mentors as well as technical support and resources from Facebook and Co-creation hub to further develop our technology and structure our business for scale.
About the Millennium Fellow
Kolawole Oluwatomisin is a medical student at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, he is the brand Manager of the University of Ibadan's Entrepreneurs Network, he was the General Secretary of Enactus between 2015 and 2016 and the director of Tomkol-Jachen organization, a youth development platform which focuses on promoting and empowering students and youths. The organization reached out to 1000 students in the University of Ibadan between 2016 and 2017.
Oluwatomisin is passionate and enthusiastic about using the power of entrepreneurship and innovation to drive sustainable impact in his immediate community. He leads the Vinsighte health-tech team and together with the team he has won a number of accolades which includes: An honorable mention award by the World Bank Group, The 2018 Union Bank Campus Innovation award for best innovation in Nigeria, , Award of honor for the top 3 student startups in Nigeria by Global Student Entrepreneurship Awards among others.
Oluwatomisin hopes to influence other youths in his community to become change-makers and advocates for the SDGs.
