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 ASHIESH THOMAS MATHEWS, A MILLENNIUM FELLOW FOR THE CLASS OF 2019.
TKM College of Engineering | Kollam, India | Advancing SDG 4 & UNAI 3
" I am excited to be a Millennium Fellow because it is a great opportunity for me to enhance my leadership skills and grow as a leader in my community by applying my leadership skills through hands-on community work.
Another exciting part about being a Millennium Fellow is that it gives me the opportunity to connect with like-minded peers and extraordinary leaders from all over the world. "
Millennium Fellowship Project: The School Intervention Programme
Our project was a long term action focussing the High School students and children sheltered in various orphanages and other backward schools in the district of Kollam.
The prime aim of the programme was to offer the under 18 students, an introduction to the new world of education providing them with special capacity building and career guidance training sessions which was organised and co-ordinated by us.
We aimed to make the rising youth aware of the plethora of opportunities before them like scholarships, better educational ambience,removing their Anxiety through various skill empowering activities. We also helped them enhance their hidden traits and talents.
we assisted the students to know and realise "How to Learn" rather than What to Learn. We helped to introduce a spark among the students, the necessity for being a socially-committed person.
Our project was focused on SDG number four which was Quality Education. Education facilitates quality learning which would help us develop our skills and knowledge. The school intervention program was focused on teaching the students to learn rather than study. Our team members visited Inspire Study Centre situated in Punalur for implementing our project. We met very talented and unique students who have dreams but were unaware of the path towards achieving them. We split into groups and focused our attention on specific students. All of us spent time in getting to know them and understanding their thought process. It was not just a learning experience for them but for us as well. Creating a trustful bond between the students was an important task. After getting to know each and every one of them we were able to guide them in the right direction towards achieving their goals. For those who were unclear about their future, we were able to open their minds to the countless opportunities awaiting them.. All in all, rather than taking it up as a project, it was a really developing process for all those involved.
The educational institutions that we visited for our project had many talented young minds with plenty of dreams. But these children had many obstacles that they had to overcome. Some of them had issues at home, some had financial issues and for some, they were an obstacle to themselves. Through this meeting, our main aim was to get to know these children- their strengths, weaknesses and every issue that could be solved by us. After talking to them, we understood that they were very ambitious for their age but most of them had issues, which could be solved if we just spent a few hours of our time with them. After this visit, we all made the collective decision that we would continue this project even after the fellowship and we will make sure that each of the children that we met that day will surely achieve all their dreams.
About the Millennium Fellow
Ashiesh Thomas Mathews is a 2nd year Computer Science Engineering student at TKM College of Engineering, Kollam, India. Ashiesh is a budding programmer. He is passionate about helping others and hopes to use his educational experiences to create a positive change in his community.