ABOUT THE MILLENNIUM FELLOWSHIP - CLASS OF 2025
United Nations Academic Impact and MCN are proud to partner on the Millennium Fellowship. This year, 60,000+ young leaders applied to join the Class of 2025 on 7,000+ campuses across 170 nations. 290+ campuses worldwide (less than 5%) were selected to host the 4,500+ Millennium Fellows.
UNITED NATIONS ACADEMIC IMPACT AND MCN PROUDLY PRESENT DIVINE MADZIMA, A MILLENNIUM FELLOW FOR THE CLASS OF 2025.
University of Zimbabwe | Harare, Zimbabwe | Advancing SDG 1, SDG 2, SDG 3, SDG 4, SDG 5, SDG 8, SDG 17 & UNAI 3
" “No child should have to remember their way home alone ,this is a truth I carry in every story written in my rain-warped notebook of forgotten details. The Millennium Fellowship excites me because it transforms that belief into lasting systems of dignity and belonging, ensuring that the invisible are finally seen, remembered, and reconnected. What began as one person’s stubborn hope now has the chance to grow into a model of justice and compassion that advances the Sustainable Development Goals for communities too often left behind.” "
Millennium Fellowship Project: Tracing Hope: Tracing Paths, Restoring Futures
Tracing Hope: Tracing Paths, Restoring Futures
In the shadowed corners of our community where hope struggles to survive, we found our calling. Tracing Hope began when we looked into the eyes of a child sleeping on cold pavement and saw our own reflection. When we listened to a mother's silent tears over her hungry children, we heard our own heartbeat. And in that moment, we realized: these are not someone else's children, someone else's mothers, someone else's problems. They are us.
We are not heroes or saviors. We are simply neighbors who decided to stop looking away. We are the bridge between the forgotten and the remembered, between despair and possibility. Our work begins not with solutions, but with sitting in the dust beside those who have been left behind and asking: "Will you tell me your story?"
When a grandmother raising her orphaned grandchildren trusts us with her fears, when a young person battling addiction shares their struggle, when a survivor of violence whispers their truth - we receive these stories as sacred gifts. And with each story, we make a solemn promise: "You are no longer alone. We will walk with you until we find the light together."
We trace paths through what often feels like an impossible maze - navigating bureaucracy, knocking on doors of organizations, connecting a homeless youth to a shelter, a struggling student to education, a sick mother to healthcare. But what we're really tracing is the outline of God's image in every person we serve - the divine worth that poverty and circumstance tried to erase.
This work has humbled us, broken our hearts, and remade them larger than we ever imagined possible. We have learned that the most powerful force for change isn't money or programs, but the courage to see ourselves in each other's struggles.
Tracing Hope is our love letter to humanity - a testament that no one is beyond reach, no one is unworthy of a second chance, and no one should ever have to face their darkest moments alone. We are tracing paths, yes, but what we're really restoring is the truth that every life is precious, every story matters, and every soul deserves to dream again.
About the Millennium Fellow
Divine Madzima is a Biomedical Sciences student on the MBChB pathway at the University of Zimbabwe and the founder of Tracing Hope, a grassroots initiative that reconnects missing adults, street children, and abandoned disabled youth with their families. His journey began with nothing more than a notebook and the belief that memory could outlast bureaucracy. From a boy’s sketch of his mother’s red headscarf to an old man found after 27 years, Divine has proven that forgotten details can restore dignity. As a Millennium Fellow 2025, he aspires to transform Tracing Hope into a lasting model advancing SDG 16.
