ABOUT THE MILLENNIUM FELLOWSHIP - CLASS OF 2024
United Nations Academic Impact and MCN are proud to partner on the Millennium Fellowship. This year, 52,000+ young leaders applied to join the Class of 2024 on 6,000+ campuses across 170 nations. 280+ campuses worldwide (just 5%) were selected to host the 4,000+ Millennium Fellows.
UNITED NATIONS ACADEMIC IMPACT AND MCN PROUDLY PRESENT DISHA BANERJEE, A MILLENNIUM FELLOW FOR THE CLASS OF 2024.
University of Delhi North Campus | New Delhi, India | Advancing SDG 5, SDG 10 & UNAI 6
" "I have always believed that the world together is more beautiful than countries in isolation. Knowledge is doubled only when shared. The Millennium Fellowship gives me a community of like-minded young individuals who share my zeal to change the world for the better. A group of people who I share my anxieties and worries with as much as my passions and it helps create a sense of a larger picture of togetherness in advocating for the issues we care about. Moreover, as a person from a third world country, there is a lack of resources to learn about social impact and ensure tangible results which makes the learning opportunities at the Fellowship a perfect place to enhance myself, which are otherwise not available. There is also a great opposition and dismissal to youth working in activism and as a Millennium Fellow, I would be able to garner much more accessibility and allowance in doing activism than without being a Fellow. " "
Millennium Fellowship Project: Project Shakti
My project’s central stakeholder are women of the lower and middle economic classes who face domestic and sexual abuse on a daily basis. My project has three fundamental levels- first is research and awareness about the ongoing large-scale domestic and sexual abuse faced by women which is a topic not talked about by many. The research initiative would include gathering first-hand accounts of domestic and sexual abuse survivors and victims and societal mechanisms that perpetuate it. This knowledge would be disseminated through seminars, documentaries, papers and interactive sessions across schools and colleges. The second level is connecting with NGOs and government aid bodies to create safe spaces for women who need support to break out of their dark situations along with appealing to the government for implementation of stern policies to punish abusers at home and at workplaces. The third level would be to create an organisation which funds economically disabled women to learn skills to land a job and earn enough to sustain themselves, provide them education to be independent individuals and make them empowered to leave their abusive husbands and households because the primary reason for women to be stuck in abusive environments in India is economic dependence.
About the Millennium Fellow
Disha Banerjee is an undergraduate of history at Miranda House, University of Delhi. Her love for history stems from a desire to understand how present human societies have taken shape, how conflicts and oppressive systems have built up over time and what potential solutions would change the landscape of the future.
A passionate advocate for human rights and climate justice, Disha believes that activism is an inevitable part of her that she has felt bubble to the surface since a very young age. She is the General Secretary of Girl Up Astitva, the Girl Up Club of her college where she works towards enforcing women’s rights. She also served as the Green Brigade Captain in her high school wherein her role was to create a sustainable and greener campus.
Disha believes in engaging with marginalized communities and perceiving their problems as our own to even begin an attempt at solving them. She is strictly against tokenistic activism and measures her work by tangible means. As someone from the Global South, she strongly advocates for representation at the international level for third-world countries and an equal chance for them to participate in activism.
