ABOUT THE MILLENNIUM FELLOWSHIP - CLASS OF 2022
United Nations Academic Impact and MCN are proud to partner on the Millennium Fellowship. Over 31,000 young leaders on 2,400+ campuses across 140+ nations applied to join the Class of 2022. 200+ campuses worldwide (just 8%) were selected to host the 3,000+ Millennium Fellows.
UNITED NATIONS ACADEMIC IMPACT AND MCN PROUDLY PRESENT VISHRUT PARAKULANGARA, A MILLENNIUM FELLOW FOR THE CLASS OF 2022.
Hidayatullah National Law University | Raipur, India | Advancing SDG 10 & UNAI 7
" " It has been rightly said that ' Alone, we can do so little, together we can do so much'. This also becomes one of the several reasons, as to why the notion of being a Millennium Fellow excites me. While, isolated action, may result in self-satisfaction, colloborative work, with like-minded peers around the world, would help in producing tangible and more meaningful contributions to the society. Moreover, the experience and the oppurtunity to stand shoulder to shoulder with thousands of people, hailing from different parts of the world, and the prospect of learning from all of them, would lead to a process of self- actualisationamong everyone, and would also help in providing a structured and moremethodical approach in solving the various societal problems and issues which the SDG and the Millennium Development Goals seek to resolve." "
Millennium Fellowship Project: Mitigating Multidimensional Inequalities Amongst Remote Communities
To achieve tangible benefits while securing SDG 10 ( Reduced inequalities) in remote communities, we need to set up a foundation in SDG 4(Quality Education) and SDG 5(Gender Equality).
Thus, while we aim to secure benefits from SDG 10, our project will transcend the demarcations laid down by the UN's Sustainable Development Goals to develop our community holistically. While doing so, we shall aim to satisfy SDG 10.3, which emphasizes ensuring equal opportunity and reducing the inequalities of the outcome by mobilizing policy making and efficient legislation to address and do away with discriminatory results in terms of economic, social, political and legal inclusion. Our tangential aims shall be redressing SDGs 4 AND 5, and that shall be done as follows:
SDG 4: At this point, it becomes imperative to recognize our privilege because of studying in one of India’s premier law schools. The benefits of having a liberal atmosphere around the university campus have exposed us to several think tanks - Girl UpRise, Indian Forum for Public Diplomacy, Global Youth - socially-motivated alumni and NGOs whose goals are similar to ours. Thus, we aim to collaborate and mobilize our efforts with such NGOs to raise the standard of primary education in our community through various seminars and undertaking several educational activities in the languishing areas of our community.
SDG 5: Gender Equality remains a hurdle in both connected and remote areas, and to channel legal access and aid to target gender analysis and inclusion across all walks of life, our objective is to spread awareness through informative modules in local languages (with translation to respective dialects) and physical and virtual seminars and conferences with authorities in the sphere as well as shaping the model to be stakeholder centric.
SDG 10 provides for various dimensions for reducing inequalities. The most pressing of these are education and gender. The concept of an egalitarian society demands the presence of quality education and gender equality, for they are the carriers of social justice and realizing the idea of equal opportunity.
Thus, our project will reduce the existing inequalities in our society by targeting the void of quality education framed under a gender-centric mould to shape an all-inclusive culture for future generations.
Through the progress of the plan, the 10th Academic Impact Principle- A commitment to promoting intercultural dialogue and understanding and the unlearning of intolerance through education is strengthened as we recognize the benefits of being a part of an institute that supports inter-state and inter-cultural accommodation through increased engagement and insight into tribal values and tradition and help us mechanize a blueprint which has been elaborated in targeted answers.
Given the colossal amount of funding that would be necessary for our plans to come into effect, we intend to secure multiple funding sources for the entire project. Given the rather exorbitant amount of money that is charged by the education sector in general and Law schools and institutes specifically, we have majorly distinguished two sources of funding that we intend to tap for our initiative;
CSR Funding: India as a country has amongst the largest conglomerates globally, which have gigantic CSR departments. Multinational corporates that maintain trusts which exist just for educational spending are something that we intend to tap for financing our project and helping it substantially in the economic arena. Also, as most of these departments have focused on STEM education in the past, we believe it would be rather apt and logical for them to begin spending in the more contemporary and socially necessary fields.
Alumni Base: Law is a relatively small and elite field, with most of the general populace being unaware of the actual work done by professionals in the area and the necessity of talented people entering this field. Therefore, we deemed it rather prudent and rational to ask esteemed alumni from all the primary law schools to guide us and provide us with resources to take this prospect forward.
About the Millennium Fellow
Vishrut Parakulangara, currently pursuing B.A. L.L.B. ( Hons.) from Hidayatullah National Law University, Raipur, has always been inquisitive and passionate about doing something substantial for the society and also, the world at large. Hailing from Bhilai, a town in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, Vishrut has seen and observed the plight of various people, belonging to remote and indegenous communities, who had every odds against them, owing due to the prevailing inequalities and the lack of infrastrucural opppurtunities. This. became a driving force for Vishrut, to work with like-minded people , in order to become a small cog in the machine, working for the upliftment of such remote communities and try to give back to the society in a meaningful manner.
