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They say inspiration can strike in the most unlikely places. For Alex IP, inspiration and ultimately social impact came from a failed college application. Alex founded The Xylom, a STEM-based media site, at 18 to make himself more appealing to his top university choice. Although Alex did not get into the college for which The Xylom was founded, he quickly realized the social impact that his site could bring about and continued to work on it. The Xylom is a media site that invites STEM professionals to share their personal stories outside of their research and aims to reveal the human side of scientists. The ultimate goal is to show how STEM professionals are changing the world and how they contribute to society both through and outside of their fields and to show the impact and diversity of science. The site shares stories that tackle three main questions. What do STEM professionals look like? How are STEM professionals shaped by events outside of the lab? How do people respond to the changing world through science? Thus far, The Xylom averages about 1000 unique users per month and has collected over 60 stories from over 40 contributors. Their contributors span across 20 countries and regions, work across multiple disciplines and are usually early-career science professionals such as graduate students or associate professors. Additionally, over half of these science professionals identify as non-male. The media site has been featured by top-tier STEM institutions such as Georgia Tech and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has been republished in leading industry media sites such as ASBMB Today. Alex, himself, has been selected for the 10 X 10 X TECH: 100 of the Institute's Most Interesting People, Places and Ideas by Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine. Alex feels that The Xylom and the power of narrative are socially relevant because it helps to bridge the gap between STEM professionals and the general public. Although STEM professionals are one of the most educated groups, they are also disproportionately affected by a legacy of social issues such as gender inequality, racism, mental health, and social harassment. Further, they are often not recognized for their work because of public indifference and a lack of non-technical communication skills and community engagement.  Bridging the gap between these professionals and the general public aids in building a society where civil discussion is encouraged and backed by facts, fake news is eliminated, differences in viewpoints can be discussed without resentment, and where science can unlock everyone’s full potential. The most recent topic that The Xylom will be focusing on is how lives are changing because of the COVID-19 pandemic. For Alex, joining the class of 2019 Millennium Fellows was a natural progression for his project. Joining the Fellowship, connected him to experts and colleagues working in social impact, and gave his project exposure and standing. “The Millennium Fellowship was immensely helpful because it taught the art and science of constructive criticism. It was challenging and rewarding to observe my fellow Millennium Fellows and discuss what I do so that I could see how well I am developing and delivering ideas; ie. how well strangers could understand what I am doing, how I am going to do it, and why it matters.” The Fellowship also encouraged Alex to seek out similar initiatives and branch out in his community. “Some great changes that happened (through the Millennium Fellowship) were that I put an increased emphasis in understanding similar events and initiatives in and around campus; I was able to collaborate with some professors and graduate students on my campus, also with our Student Government Association. Previously I was too occupied on outward growth (ie. connecting contributors from other localities) other than focusing on the stories within Georgia tech, which is a STEM-focused institute with a population of over 30,000! Personally, it also encouraged me to be more aware of things that are happening close to me.” In the future, Alex envisions The Xylom to be the go-to media site for narratives around science and human connections. He would also like it to be made available in multiple languages, a feature that is currently being worked on, and would like it to develop a global audience and create partnerships with other media sites and international organizations. In the future, Alex would also like so solidify his love of science and story-telling and is currently considering graduate programs in policy and journalism. “I enjoy storytelling and helping folks become more curious and compassionate of the world around us. Maybe that was why I was drawn into science in the first place, because science is inevitably, from the standpoint of a person of faith, understanding how God plays chess!” Learn more about The Xylom: https://www.thexylom.com Support The Xylom financially: https://www.patreon.com/thexylom

Ayesha Noor Fatima was raised in a single-parent household in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Throughout her childhood, she observed the enormous financial, emotional, and physical struggle that her mother underwent to raise her. These struggles coupled with her mother’s sheer resilience carefully curated Ayesha’s understanding of the power of the female gender and led to the formation of Project Darakshan. Project Darakshan is a social entrepreneurship venture that focuses on empowering marginalized women, the transgender community, and other related vulnerable groups in Pakistan. Project Darakshan was initially created to connect marginalized women together to form a support group where they could access means to financial and social empowerment. Since the project’s conception in September 2019, it has grown substantially. Project Darakshan has reached national forums such as Shaoor Foundation and Peace without Borders Pakistan. It has also expanded and extended its support to similar causes in Cameroon Africa. Through the Project Darakshan platform, campaigns were designed for the establishment of female support groups and anti-gender violence groups. These campaigns were launched with the Cameroon Association of Active Youths (CAMMAY), Africa via the United Nations Volunteer Program. CAMMAY has also requested collaboration with Project Darakshan in establishing a network of support groups to connect women in Pakistan and Cameroon. Further, Project Darakshan is steadily becoming an advocacy springboard for the transgender population in Pakistan. This community has traditionally been alienated in Pakistan and has faced rejection from family, friends, and society at large. They are also at an increased risk for violence, sexual abuse, depression, and higher suicide rates. As this project grows and furthers, Ayesha finds herself relying on leadership lessons from the Millennium Fellowship. One of the most valuable lessons that she took away from the Fellowship was that every drop counts and that every action can leave an impact on society. The Millennium Fellowship helped me turn my passion into a reality. It gave me the motivation and strength to start my own initiative where I could work for a cause that is much more beyond than my own self. The training at the onset of the Fellowship provided me a strong grounding to assume a leadership role while taking up a community initiative and contributing my share for the uplift of my community. It provided me an effective international platform that linked me up with youth who were equally passionate as I was towards contributing to their communities. Their success stories and persistence provided me a vigor to pursue my project and gave me valuable insights as to how I can further broaden my project in near future. So far, with the support and the platform of the Millennium Fellowship, Ayesha expects to see even more growth for this project. She hopes that Project Darakshan can one day become a leading non-profit that champions the rights of marginalized women and vulnerable groups in Pakistan. To learn more about this initiative follow Project Dharakshan on Instagram & Facebook.

At the age of 22, Faizan Nadeem started Street School, an educational program for Afghan refugees living in the slums of Islamabad. What started as one person’s dream is now a 50 person operation that has allowed over 70 refugee children access to education. Street School aims to deliver a well-rounded education to its students. Volunteers at the school teach basic subjects such as math, science and English. Additionally, they also teach children about their rights in society and instill a sense of confidence in them that allows them to fight for themselves. According to Faizan education is the most important way that he can contribute back to society and it is his birthright as both his father and his grandfather were educators. “I have got teaching skills in my blood and I must use them for the betterment of the society that I am a part of. For me, the betterment of my society is the betterment of myself.” However, education was not always as important to Faizan. He first went to a community college but quickly grew tired of his studies. He dropped out of the college 2 years later and went into a period of depression. With the support of his family, he was able to get back on track and start studying again. Two years later he gained admission to his dream school, the National University of Science and Technology in Pakistan. His struggle with the educational system made Faizan realise that he wanted to work on improving education in Pakistan for those who could not afford it. Thus the idea of Street School was born. The first step that Faizan took in establishing his school was joining the Millennium Fellowship. His goal in doing so was to learn how to start his project and how to sustain it. “The Millennium Fellowship helped to clear the path and directed our institute to facilitate us in this project. Moreover, I was able to learn from the training sessions and data on the Crew platform and implement them to create positive results such as collaborations.” Street School has been active for around 4 months now and is impacting an entire generation of society in Pakistan. Although they have been serving the community for a short period, their efforts are already being appreciated. “The school is impacting these children as well as their families. And literally, their parents daily say thanks to my team that you are positively changing attitude of our children.” Going forward Faizan has plans to expand the project even further. He plans to open different branches of Street School by engaging different colleges and universities in different districts of Pakistan. He believes that opening different branches and guaranteeing education for all children regardless of social class is the key to transforming his society and ending the cycle of poverty that parts of his community face. “I truly believe that poverty can never stand against quality education and we can transform society through this school.” #MillenniumFellowship #Pakistan

Pranjal Jain is a 2019 Millennium Fellow, a student at Cornell University, former undocumented immigrant, and the founder of a revolutionary female empowerment media platform, Global Girlhood. Global Girlhood aims to transform the way that women interact with each other across the globe. It does this by gathering common women’s stories of empowerment and then sharing those stories with other women in other communities. This, in turn, creates a global platform that bridges intercultural gaps and fosters lasting connections by creating a network of women who are invested in each others success. Global Girlhood is a project that is very personal to Pranjal. Because she grew up as a South-Asian American and an undocumented immigrant, she did not see many role models in the media that looked like her or represented her. “I rarely got to see women who looked like me and wanted to pursue the same field as me. That lack of representation fueled my background and my life up until now.” To connect with women that were from the same culture as her, Pranjal spent the entire summer in 2019 interviewing women in the Jaipur community, where she was born. She went into the community intending to empower the women around her. However, once she started speaking to them she found her own personal empowerment through them. She interviewed these women on their stories, their childhood, most empowering moments, etc and was able to learn that the women that she interviewed were all already empowered in their own way. “Growing up, I heard that women in India are less empowered than other women. We are taught that women who are not here (in America) are not as empowered as we are. But that’s not true. When you go to those places and you ask the women their stories they are just as empowering if not more. They are just told differently and seen differently.” From there, Pranjal had the realization that her project had to decolonize ideals that had been taught to her over a lifetime. She had to dispel the idea that empowerment has to look a certain way and realized that the women of Jaipur were empowered but they had different narratives of empowerment than women in America do. Pranjal first heard of the Millennium Fellowship when she was a senior in high school through an alumnus of the Fellowship. She took part in his project and was able to learn more about the program from there. Since joining the Fellowship she was able to comport the lessons of the program to her project. “I think the Fellowship really showed me the importance of community-based change. Growing up I used to think that change starts with one person. Media always idolizes that one person who spearheaded change but no change is done in isolation and the Millennium Fellowship definitely showed me that. Having a community of people that are supporting your project and are invested in your success showed me that we can only create change if we all do it together.” Global Girlhood launched on December 19th, 2019 . To commemorate, they hosted a launch event in NYC at the Sap Next Gen Innovation Space. The event was grounded in storytelling and ensuring that attendees left feeling equipped to gather stories and seek the power within their own stories. The launch event featured a workshop on narrative building led by model and activist Shivani Persad and organizer Andrea Gonzalez. It also included storytelling circles meant to galvanize attendees to begin to formulate and share their stories. The event ended with a panel on the importance of authentic storytelling in generating social change featuring Amanda Rice of Chick Mission, Assemblywoman Hyndman, Assemblywoman Fernandez, activist Daphne Frias, and 13 year old climate activist Amelia Levinson.

Most people approach poverty eradication through resource distribution or access to education. However, C, a student at Lagos State University and a 2019 Millennium Fellow, has taken a different approach. He started the Gifted Hands Initiative with the goal of bringing health insurance to all Nigerians irrespective of financial and social class in order to lift them out of poverty. Although the Nigerian government launched NHIS (National Health Insurance System) in 2015 this plan covers less than 10% of the population. According to David, the people who use this plan are disproportionately wealthy. This means that the most vulnerable populations in Nigeria do not have social or financial health protection. Around 70% of the Nigerian population lack access to basic health services due to outrageous health service prices. David is a part of this 70% block of Nigerians. Thus came the idea for his project. “The idea of this project is to raise the standard of living for people in poverty by subsidising health care fees and changing health insurance in Nigeria. I recognized a need an am prepared to work for it. I want to eradicate poverty but from the health side. I focus on eradicating poverty with health as my number one priority.” He is currently challenging the insurance system in his country by starting grassroots campaigns and reaching out to local communities. He is educating people on how health and socioeconomics are closely related and how better health can allow people to lift themselves out of poverty. He believes that once health insurance is a national debate topic, people will rise up to demand better access to healthcare. He believes that the primary method for this revolution will be through social media coverage, particularly from his own generation. His second objective is to change the way that patients are attended to in the health care system. According to David, in many Nigerian hospitals, doctors and nurses do not properly attend to patients.  Before you can get any treatment you first need to show money and documentation. Then come all the followup costs from the actual treatment and drugs which very few people can actually afford. David has had several personal experiences with the concept of payment before treatment. He has lost both his mother and father to inadequate healthcare and high costs. Before his father passed away he was rejected from three hospitals in Nigeria due to the hospitals demanding payment before treatment. “The first objective should be to save the life first and ask questions later. But in my country, it is the opposite. If you don’t make a deposit no one will treat you. That is our policy and that is what I am out to change.” In order to boost his project and establish connections, David decided to join the Millennium Fellowship. The lessons that he has learned through the Fellowship have allowed him to gain credibility and understand the importance of building a sustainable health insurance system that can protect his people for generations. He also closely identifies with the values of empathy that the Fellowship continuously promotes. David feels that the value of empathy needs to be further ingrained into the Nigerian health system because it will promote treating everyone regardless of how much money they earn. “Most people that were part of this Fellowship were young people like me. Thanks to the Fellowship, I now have a platform I can stand on to reach out to my dreams and improve my country.”

Throughout history, there have been a handful of ingenious innovations that have changed how our global society functions and connects with one another. One such upcoming innovation is being led by 2019 Millennium Fellow Kami Krista from Harvard University. Her project, Earendil, works on creating a central data management hub for the climate change crisis. According to Kami, the central problem our society faces in managing this crisis is scattered, uncoordinated climate initiatives along with a lack of solid data recommendations in the policy realm. Her idea is to create a decision support system that actively integrates data from current climate initiatives which then feeds back into the system to create real-time feedback and key performance indicators for rapid decisions to be made in the climate crisis management realm. Earendil is in an early stage right now and therefore, Kami is considering taking a semester off from university to work on her initiative. She says that this isn’t a normal startup because it isn’t being done for money. The idea is to go in stages and to use philanthropic venture capital because it has less stringent conditions tied to it which lends more focus on the impact. In order to do this, Kami will need to create a functioning prototype of her data management hub which can attract professionals and experts in fields such as data modelling and management. Although she recently started working on Earendil, her love of the climate and her initial work on climate change began at age 8 when she wrote a letter to the President of Brasil demanding action and later went on to explore sustainable transportation. From age 8-16 she kept working on climate change initiatives but she never felt like it was enough and so she moved away from it. However, at 19 she rekindled her infatuation with the climate crisis with the idea of Earendil. “I felt like I kept hitting a wall and I hadn’t identified my personal key issue to bring landslide change so for a few years from 16 to 18, I sort of moved away from focusing on climate change and worked on HIV therapies and so on. Then I came back to it, and I finally felt like I had identified the (main) problem and a potential solution to it. I felt like it was going to radically alter the way we approach this crisis.” In order to further her project, Kami joined the Millennium Fellowship with the hope of networking with the right people. Although she attends one of America’s elite universities, Kami thinks it is hard to meet the right people at the right time. Another benefit of joining the Fellowship was that it provided structure to her project and allowed her to focus on her progress goals in regard to the timelines given by the Fellowship. “It is sometimes a bit of a serendipitous game of life to hope that you meet the right people. But with the Fellowship, I have a cohort of people I can get to know in the space of social impact. Also, the Fellowship giving me some type of structure is very helpful because it helps me to prioritise the work for the project and it provides legitimacy to my work. I’ve met people who might be able to boost this to the next level.” To Kami, this is the most pressing issue of the current and future generations and it is the issue that she wants to dedicate her life to. Further, she thinks that it is an initiative that everyone needs to contribute to in some small way because it affects every other crisis in the world. According to Kami, if we don’t solve climate change now then every other problem in the world will simply be amplified and humans will have to deal with dangerous and unpredictable new problems. “It comes down to the fundamental realisation that this generation and the coming generations, we have the better part of our lives to live. If we deny this crisis and deny taking action, we ultimately say no to our lives. I understand that there are many different crises in the world but if we don’t solve this one, progress in every other area is irrelevant. If we don’t solve this then the other issues will be amplified so much by this (climate) crisis. We need every single individual because climate change knows no borders and global inaction is a problem. This is not a problem where you can hope that someone else will solve it for you.”

Agaba Dunok was born in a refugee camp in South Western Uganda. Not only did he escape the refugee camp and create a future for himself but he also created a future for 300+ refugee children just like him. Agaba spent his early years in Nakivale Refugee Settlement. His parents were survivors of the Rwandan Genocide and fled to Uganda in order to escape the conflict. Conditions in the camp were extremely difficult for his family. Diseases such as cholera, ebola, HIV, and AIDS were rampant while food and water were scarce. The living situation eventually took a toll on Agaba’s mother. She passed away when he was just three years old. Shortly after his mother’s demise,  his father left the family in order to accept a job elsewhere. After his father left Agaba was orphaned and alone in a refugee camp. However, even as a young boy Agaba was entrepreneurial. He soon got to know an older woman, Ms. Katurumba who needed his help. Ms. Katurumba was too old to collect water from the local water well by herself and so Agaba volunteered to do it for her in exchange for a hot meal. The two of them eventually developed a mother-son bond and Agaba would stay at her home occasionally. Ms.Katurumba’s biological son, Mr. Arishaba Edson, soon took notice of the boy and offered him a place at his primary school. For Agaba this was the opportunity of a lifetime. He left his life in the refugee camp and started school at Mary and Paul Primary school where he was both a worker and a student. He stayed at the school full-time. When he was not in classes he would help to raise cows for the school. Despite working and studying at the same time, Agaba excelled in his studies. He loved learning and performed very well in his academic life. “I love to be in school more than I love being at home. In school, is the first time I had 2 meals a day. I loved education very much.” His love of education eventually earned him a scholarship to high school and an entry point to Makerere University. The empowerment he gained from his education and his university life led him to found KIDSAID Uganda in 2016. KIDSAID provides refugee children in Uganda with the opportunity to attend primary school. Agaba finds these refugee children in the same camp that he grew up in or on the side of the road and riverbanks. He has been able to create a partnership with  the Kitwe Primary school Located in Kitwe-Ruhaama -Ntungamo District ,South Western Uganda. This school and Agaba signed a Memorandum of Understanding which allows refugee children to attend the school while paying 20% of the original school fee. Agaba pays for these children through sponsors and his own personal business of growing trees and selling firewood. The aim for KIDSAID is to help refugee children to gain an education and excel to the university level or beyond. “In 2016 we started with only 20 kids but today we have helped 349 kids. Out of 349 kids, about 200 have been able to make it to high school.” For Agaba, KIDSAID is his life-mission. He joined the Millennium Fellowship with the intention of promoting his organization and lending credibility to it. Since joining the Fellowship as both a Fellow and Campus Director, he has been able to improve his managerial skills, learn how to interact with different people, and build partnerships. He has also learned to gauge how different people might react to different situations. “I would like to directly apply the network I have gained (from the Fellowship) to my organization as the Fellowship has helped me to connect to life-minded people in my community.” In the next few years, Agaba has a big vision for KIDSAID. He wishes to build his own school in 5-8 years.This school will be dedicated to helping refugee children like himself. He also wants to introduce vocational education such as metalwork or woodwork in this school so that the children have multiple options for their future. “The project of my life is KIDSAID Uganda. It is the best project I can do in my lifetime. It appeals to my personal emotions and emotional being. We all know education is the only weapon against underdevelopment. I’m trying to create a generation of refugees that understand why they were displaced and understand how to survive.”

As of September 2019, there have been over 600,000 suspected cases of cholera in Yemen and over 900 cholera related deaths. The outbreak of this deadly disease along with the ongoing civil war has overshadowed other threats in Yemen including, malaria. However, three Millennium Fellows at Al- Razi University have refocused their public health efforts to focus on the under-spotlighted disease of malaria. One of these Fellows, Sally Al-Shrjabi, started her education at the Al Razi College of Medicine. In the course of her studies, she transitioned from medicine to public and community health in order to focus on preventive health techniques as opposed to active treatment. “I think it is much better to focus on learning how to prevent diseases from occurring in the first place. I think my public health major allows me to interact more with society and help them to stay safe and healthy.” ~ Sally Al-Shrjabi Although Sally, Hanin, and Mizer are now seniors at Al Razi University, they never had a chance to screen members of their community for any preventable diseases, including malaria, before joining the Millennium Fellowship. The Millennium Fellowship gave Al Razi Fellows the credibility to form partnerships with their local health centres and to obtain the necessary materials to treat malaria. With the recognition from the Fellowship, Sally, Hanin, and Mizer were able to travel to 7 different villages in the Bani Qais District, Hajjah Governorate. “مشروع الملاريا كان قد تم دراسته قبل سنه لكن للأسف لم نلقى الدعم المادي لتمويل المشروع ، وعلى الرغم من دعم الجامعة لجهودنا واجهنا العديد من الصعوبات بما في ذلك التحديات الاجتماعية والاقتصادية.، لكن الزمالة الألفية ساعدتنا وصلتنا لناس ساعدتنا كثير في تقديم خدمة لمجتمعنا ” “We started planning the malaria project one year ago but unfortunately, we did not find sponsorship, and despite the university's support we faced many difficulties including socio-economic challenges. However, the Millennium Fellowship has helped us reach people that helped us a lot in serving our community ~ Hanin Al-Sabri Although the Millennium Fellowship first opened the door for the Al Razi Fellows to help their community, they still faced significant challenges in implementing the project. One such challenge was the lack of transportation due to the war. The Millennium Fellows and Al-Razi University overcame this obstacle by getting security clearance from the National Organization for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. This is the authority responsible for granting permits to execute community projects. Once their clearance was approved, the government and security authorities were also informed of their malaria prevention project. They also had to cross multiple obstacles in the checkpoints on the roads in order to reach these villages. Once the clearance was approved they coordinated the project with the Malaria Control Program who were able to provide training and doses of the malaria medication. They also provided the vehicle to transport students to the villages. Despite facing significant obstacles, the three Millennium Fellows and a small team of volunteers were able to screen over 500 people and treat 10 identified cases of malaria. The villages that they went into were often very far removed from the city centre and were not priority areas for medical professionals. Due to this, the Millennium Fellows were immediately identified as medical experts and were able to help people who have little to no access to medical services. “كان عملهم متميز جدا ويعتبر اكثر مشروع تأثيرا من حيث المهام والانشطة فقد سافر الطلاب الى مكان بعيد جدا عن مقر الجامعة واستمروا فترة في موقع المشروع في منطقة ريفية" “The work was outstanding and is one of the most impactful projects when it comes to the activities and tasks that were carried out. The students travelled to a location that’s very far from the university campus and they remained there in the project site in a rural area.” ~ Dr. Sharaf Shana, Fellowship Coordinator at Al-Razi University

For Michael Gallo, being a part of the Millennium Fellowship played a significant role in leading him towards his first job post-graduation. Michael was a 2018 Millennium Fellow and Campus Director at Moravian College, the sixth oldest institution of higher education in the United States. For the duration of the Fellowship, he worked on directing community-based initiatives that addressed food insecurity and promoted awareness of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in local schools. A year after completing the Fellowship, he is currently working as a Visiting Research Assistant at the United Nations University Institute on Computing and Society (UNU-CS) located in Macau, China. UNU-CS is a research institute at the intersections of information and communication technology (ICT) and international development. The Institute conducts UN policy-relevant research and generates solutions, addressing key issues expressed in the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development through high-impact innovations and frontier technologies. In particular, the team Michael is a part of at UNU-CS is working on a mobile solution called Apprise, that seeks to identify and assist victims of human trafficking and labour exploitation. Apprise consists of two main tools; one that is used for victim identification in the Thai fishing industry (notorious for human rights abuses) and the other which is used in social compliance auditing for large private corporations in their global supply chains. Apprise aims to close the data gap on human trafficking and forced labour by enabling the collection of high-quality data to create responsive policy. Michael's responsibilities as a part of this project include data analysis, publication writing, and researching how public health methodologies and frameworks can be applied for the prevention of human trafficking. Michael credits a large part of being a qualified candidate for this job to his experience with the Millennium Fellowship. “Out of the many transformative experiences that I had during my time as an undergraduate, the Millennium Fellowship was definitely number one for me in terms of experiential learning and leadership development. I think that my research background in public health and my leadership experience through the Fellowship were the perfect combination when applying for this position because I was able to effectively demonstrate my commitment to the principles of the UN and the SDGs. Sam always talked about requisite experience being a barrier for young people interested in social impact work to have to overcome and I see my own story as another tremendous example of the capacity building potential of the Fellowship.” Michael also went on to say that he sees lessons learned from the Millennium Fellowship implemented in his job every day. The project that he is a part of was designed in consultation with all key stakeholders, including migrant workers in vulnerable situations; local and regional NGOs; the Thai Government; Royal Thai Navy; regional embassies; and inter-governmental institutions. “I think back to content of one of the Fellowship sessions I led where our group was discussing the different ways in which development projects, in spite of their best intentions, can go wrong without understanding the local context and giving a voice to everyone involved. In particular, giving a voice to those who are the targeted beneficiaries of a project is of the highest priority. You need that buy in to understand the needs of individuals and communities and how potential solutions can be created.” Michael's job as a researcher at UNU-CS has served as a reaffirmation that he wants to continue his work in social impact through his chosen career path of medicine and global health. Starting in August 2020, Michael will be pursuing a dual degree MD/MPH at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. *Applications for the Millennium Fellowship Class of 2021 are now open!

For Shakira Nynagoma, the kindness of strangers has played an invaluable role in life. Shakira lost her mother at an early age. After her mother’s demise, Shakira’s father was unable to pay for her schooling, but this did not stop her from continuing her education. After graduating from high school Shakira applied to the MasterCard Foundation Scholarship to obtain funding for her academic future. Now she, along with 9 other University of Makerere students have started the Skyward Alliance Trust (SAT) to help other struggling students and give back to their community. “I was being helped by the MasterCard Foundation right up from high school. I am now living a good life and I am studying. I want to do the same for other people because sometimes when you don’t have a helper you can fail to achieve your dreams.” The Skyward Alliance Trust (SAT) is a project that aims to reduce the number of students that drop out of school due to monetary problems. SAT lends money to struggling students and allows them to pay back the loan at their own pace with an affordable level of interest charged. The interest money is then used to fund even more students. SAT also provides students with business opportunities to earn their own money and to pay for their education. SAT currently helps around 60 students in the Makerere community. The major goals of SAT are to, eliminate the number of students dropping out of school for financial reasons, educate the youth on the UN Sustainable Development Goals particularly quality education, and to create a sustainable system by which youth can pursue or create employment opportunities to fund their education. In order to take her project to the next level, Shakira decided to join the Millennium Fellowship. She joined the Fellowship to meet fellow young people who are passionate about helping their communities and to better learn how to run her project. According to Shakira, the most valuable part of the Fellowship so far are the lessons that she has learned from it. “I have been able to learn how to work in a team to achieve goals. I’ve been able to learn how to distribute tasks, how to listen to other people’s ideas, and how to grow together.” Shakira continually emphasizes that the kindness of the people at the MasterCard Foundation is what got her so far in life and is the reason why she is passionate about giving back to her community. “I was being helped by people I didn’t even know. They are not my parents and I’ve never seen them before. It is through this, that I developed the passion to help other people in my community so they can reach the same (university) level that I am at.” Shakira hopes that with the help of the Millennium Fellowship she will be able to take her project, the Skyward Alliance Trust to the next level. Her organization hopes to start more projects to provide self-employment and to extend the project to other communities to help more people.

In 2016, Odaly S. Balasquide Odeh came to a crushing realisation in the happiest place on Earth – Disney Land. Like many other visitors, Odaly got to watch the celebrated fireworks show at Disney Land. However, instead of being fascinated by their beauty and grandeur, the fireworks made her sad because of the smoke and contamination that they were putting out into the atmosphere. When she started university, Odaly ran her reflection past her honours professor and decided to focus on atmospheric pollution as a research thesis topic. In order to figure out how to meet the needs of her community, Odaly met up with local news reporters in Puerto Rico and identified specific topics within air pollution that were affecting her country and her people. Together, they identified the topic of the disposal and re-use of coal combustion waste. “The thing that made me really focus on this project was the urgency I felt after the storm. It was something I needed to experience.” Around one year later on September 20, 2017, Puerto Rico was hit by Hurricane Maria. Hurricane Maria pushed the 3.4 million residents of Puerto Rico into a humanitarian crisis. The powerful category 4 hurricane destroyed homes, limited access to running water, and cut electricity on the island. For many Puerto-Ricans, Hurricane Maria demonstrated the dangerous effects of climate change. For Odaly, it was a tipping point. She realised that her research into coal combustion waste and the effect that it plays on climate change was critical. After Hurricane Maria, Odaly began focusing on her research with renewed vigour and specialised her project even more. She is currently researching how the ashes from coal combustion are being discarded and repurposed. She explained that the disposal or repurposing of these ashes are not sufficiently regulated in Puerto Rico and therefore can cause serious harm to the environment and the health of communities. She went on to explain that there have been many environmental and health problems arising in the areas where these ashes have been discarded or used, which might indicate a dangerous correlation. She has also been focusing on increasing education in the topic of coal combustion ash by-product and educating local populations on understanding the needs of the environment. “After the storms we started experiencing, the passion for the project and the excitement to do something got even stronger and that was one of the reasons why I applied to the Millennium Fellowship. I stopped thinking I will have enough time after I graduate to work on this. I started thinking, I need to start on this and I can’t wait on this any longer. The planet needs us now.” ! Her enthusiasm for her project eventually led her to apply to the 2019 Millennium Fellowship. Through the Fellowship she has connected to students from all around the world and hopes to come together with them to fight climate change and its effects together. The Millennium Fellowship currently has 40+ students working on climate action and change initiatives globally. Odaly sincerely believes that the world waits for no one. She thinks that if you have a good idea, you need to go out and implement it as soon as possible even if you do not have all the qualifications. When she first started this project, she faced a lot of doubts because she was a student researcher. However, she has persevered and has kept going because she knows that her research is making a difference. She says, “I think the focus should be on not limiting yourself. It's not about having the overall professional experience, its about learning through process and the experience. It is important that we start doing things now.” Odaly hopes that when she leaves her university she will have left a legacy for other students to build on her research in atmospheric pollution and in climate change research. She also hopes to have inspired others to look for the tools around them and not limit themselves to change their communities.

In Zimbabwe, many cannot afford the first building block of education – pre-school. Zimbabwe has a unique law which mandates that all students must attend two years of Early Childhood Development (ECD) pre-primary education before they can be enrolled in primary schools. Due to this law, the cost of pre-schools and ECD programs have gone up, forcing some families to pay fees that they cannot afford or enroll their children in unregistered, residential pre-schools. Shantel Marekera was once one of these children. Her grandmother struggled to pay steep pre-school fees while her mother attended university. Drawing from her own personal experience, Shantel started the Little Dreamers Foundation with the intention of providing access to affordable and quality pre-school education for vulnerable children in her community. In 2018 she became a Millennium Fellow and was able to take her social impact to the next level. Shantel has implemented several lessons that the Fellowship exposed her to in order to launch the Little Dreamers Foundation. One of the most notable lessons that she utilised was the skills mapping exercise which was integral to her fundraising strategy for her Foundation. She also reflected on how the Fellowship helped her to realise that in order to launch a successful venture she had to meet her community and develop trusting partnerships with them. “Even though I grew up in Zimbabwe and I identify with the problems that the kids are going through, I had been away for 4 years (in college), which created a gap between me and my community. I needed to recognise that I still have things I do not know and ask my community how best to fulfil its needs.” Shantel used the launch of her Foundation as a point of entry to communicate with her community and understand their needs. Not only did the lessons from the Millennium Fellowship help her to launch her organisation but the sense of community that the Fellowship and her university cohort provided also helped her to brainstorm ideas and feel supported. “It was a tight community and anyone could ask for help with anything. The strength that comes from having a community that understands where you are at any particular time was really important for me.” Since leaving the Fellowship, Shantel has passed many important milestones. Not only did she successfully launch her Foundation, but also, she is currently working on creating another branch of the Foundation in a neighbouring community, Budiriro. This new branch is expected to launch in January 2020. She has also bought a mini-bus that will aid in transporting her students to and from the pre-school.  She envisions a bright future for the Little Dreamers Foundation and would eventually like to secure land to build a huge school which includes a pre-school, elementary school, and high school.

Not everyone is born with the right to an education. “For me, my passion was born out of pain” -Tolani Odukoya Tolani Odukoya grew up in Lagos, Nigeria in a low-income community. Since his mother could not fund his education, he had to create his own opportunities. In high school, he started working at a local car-wash in order to put himself through secondary school and support his mother financially. Despite spending a significant amount of time earning money to support himself and his mother, Tolani excelled academically and was extremely intelligent. His school-teacher recognized his talent and supported him to go to university. Having gotten the opportunity to get an education, Tolani founded The Mindset Initiative in order to increase access to education in low-income communities like his own. He explained that in the current educational system, most students pass through school and end up with no tangible skills that can be applied to solve real-world problems. His organisation endeavours to fix this problem by training children between the ages of 12 to 16 on relevant 21st-century skills that prepare them for future employment while also empowering vulnerable girls and women. These children are taught a variety of skills including leadership, critical thinking, entrepreneurship, and design via what Tolani calls integrated education. In an increasingly digital world, Tolani has leveraged on teaching technology and innovation concepts and has placed a special focus on computer skills including programming and coding. He shared the story of a 13-year-old girl in the Makoko community in Lagos. The entire livelihood of the Makoko community depends on fishing. In fact, most of the children in this community do not go to school. Rather, they learn how to fish. However, this 13-year-old girl from Makoko was able to develop a mobile app that better-connected fishermen to buyers at a fair price, thereby aiding the economy of her community. Tolani said, 'if this young girl could develop such an innovative invention to meet a need in her community using creativity and technology then any child can too, provided they are exposed and empowered with the necessary skills.” Tolani credits the success of his organisation in no small part to his Millennium Fellowship experience. The Fellowship taught him how to transition his vision to action and exposed him to the relevance and the needs of his community. It also taught him how to become a leader in his community and how to channel his passion productively. He explained that his experience at the Millennium Fellowship taught him the concept of “servant leadership” and how essential it is to be a “servant leader” to thrive and positively impact the lives of others in any organisation. “I was passionate as an individual but didn’t know how to lead. Once I became a Fellow, I was able to connect with the content of the Fellowship.” Since leaving the Fellowship Tolani has not only managed to become a leader and launch his educational non-profit but he has also been able to strategize about the future. He hopes that his organisation will one day be a part of the government and that integrated education will be the norm in Nigeria and in Africa at large. He also hopes to continue raising money for his organisation through crowd-funding and grants.