ABOUT THE MILLENNIUM FELLOWSHIP - CLASS OF 2021
United Nations Academic Impact and MCN are proud to partner on the Millennium Fellowship. In 2021, over 25,000 young leaders on 2,000+ campuses across 153 nations applied to join the Class of 2021. 136 campuses worldwide (just 6%) were selected to host the 2,000+ Millennium Fellows. The Class of 2021 is bold, innovative, and inclusive.
UNITED NATIONS ACADEMIC IMPACT AND MCN PROUDLY PRESENT SALMA SULTANA, A MILLENNIUM FELLOW AND CAMPUS DIRECTOR FOR THE CLASS OF 2021.
Asian University for Women | Chattogram, Bangladesh | Advancing SDG 3 & UNAI 3
" I believe serving my community to get access to better health care is what my field of study is teaching me. I have a passion to work with women and children to help them eradicate health issues so that they can lead a healthy and safe life, growing up in a happy environment. "
Millennium Fellowship Project: Bleed with Pride
"BLEED WITH PRIDE" is an ongoing project as of November 2021. ""TABOO Stop making periods a taboo. It is a natural cycle of the woman's body. Just like a beard on a man's face - Bliss."" Here the question arises, do we consider menstruator's periods to be as normal as men's beards? Sadly, the obvious answer is a no. As a solution to this issue, we are working on a project called ""Bleed With Pride"" with an aim to erase the taboo regarding menstruation and equip the neglected group of the society with proper education on menstrual health and hygiene to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Our primary target audience is the people who are deprived of having access to this much-needed knowledge. We are specifically targeting the people of the slum area. Till now, we have taken the ""BLEED WITH PRIDE"" workshop at the slum Area in Chittagong, Bangladesh to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for people of all ages. To help the less capable people, we have distributed 1000 free sanitary pads in slum areas of Chittagong to ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all and trained young girls from backward areas with a view to achieve gender equality and empower all women.
When Covid-19 has arrived as a barrier to reach with the people personally, we have planned for not sitting idly but shifting the project online. We have used artificial intelligence, Mehzabin: A Menstrual Health Education Chatbot For Social Change (m.me/mehjabin.org)/ (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BQZneItR1mqCW23Rs5JZjnHxNhWYBpPx) which offers a variety of languages, audio and self-suggestion about various questions related to menstrual health, essential products related to menstruator's health as well as complete menstrual health guidelines. Where anyone of any gender can ask unanswered questions about menstruator's menstruation. We have further planned and finalised to create an application software for the same purpose. Taboos around periods reinforce gender inequality and make it difficult to solve the challenges faced by many menstruators in managing their hygiene. There’s no shame in periods — but it is shameful that hundreds of millions of menstruation cannot deal with menstruation with dignity and privacy. It’s time to break the taboo and start talking about solutions. This project mainly focuses on SDG 3: Good Health & well beings; and SDG 4: Quality Education and UN Academic Impact: Human rights.
About the Millennium Fellow
Salma Sultana is currently an undergraduate student at the Asian University for Women, majoring in Public Health. She is from Chittagong, Bangladesh living with her parents and younger brother.
Salma is currently focusing on her studies to complete it with a decent grade and then will try to apply to an American University for Masters program. She is passionate about serving her community and help fight against health issues to provide people with better health care.