Millennium Fellowship: The Why and How
It’s been a few months since I graduated as a Millennium Fellow but the frequent questions that I get about the fellowship and its various application procedures from peers and LinkedIn network, made me want to share my journey in detail here.
What is the Millennium Fellowship?
The Fellowship is a semester-long leadership development program, initiated by the United Nations Academic Impact and Millennium Campus Network for undergraduate students.
Through this program, students from various parts of the world work towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015.
How to become a Millennium Fellow?
Before we get into the how to get selected, there is an important factor that is to be kept in mind — the Millennium Fellowship is focused on creating local impact and this is done through creating teams of students from their respective universities.
This implies that even though your application process is individual based, you need at least 8 students applying from your college/university for your institution to get recognised and for you to be moved forward through the application process.
To be eligible for the Millennium Fellowship program, you must be an undergraduate student for the entire duration of the program (Aug-Dec).
The application process happens on the Millennium Fellowship website.
The fellowship consists of two rounds of selection:
- Round 1: This consists of two simple essay questions based on your reasons for applying for the programme . If your university qualifies the minimum 8 student criteria, your application will be processed and you will receive a mail regrading your status.
- Round 2: The final round is very elaborate and this is where you will be presenting your project idea and talking about it in detail — it could be an existing project or something that you intend to work on during the fellowship. Your team from college should ideally be working on the same SDGs and the same project. However individual projects are accepted.
You will also need an academic reference to be sent to the MCN by a faculty in charge from your college to complete your final round of application.
Once you receive the decision about your selection, if selected the acceptance of the fellowship is conditional based upon the MCN receiving your academic reference on time.
If you are applying to be a campus director( the student in charge of the fellows in your college. The campus director will be responsible for the conduct of the fellows at his/her campus), there will be a special interview process which will be intimated later to you.
Once all of this is complete, you will have a virtual onboarding to the crew website and a virtual Town Hall meeting with the other fellows from different parts of the world joined by several distinguished figures at the MCN.
You will also have your profile listed on the website describing your work and project.
The Next Phase of the Fellowship
Once the meet and greet formalities are over, we get straight to work. There will be weekly cohort meetings discussing about your project and working on it with the fellows from your cohort; webinars by the MCN to aid the fellows; activities to be done on the website( there is a mobile app available now).
My cohort had a common project, the MEC Model United Nations Society and I also worked on an individual project along with that.
The MCN provides immense networking opportunities and exposure to peers from different parts of the world which can be invaluable to an undergraduate student.
My individual project was called FOSS For All — a series of workshops for girls of the age group 15–18 on Free and Open Source Software and its importance in our lives. The workshops were conducted in the month of October simultaneously with HacktoberFest and impacted around 120+ students in the aforementioned category.
The Final Lap
The activities and the time period in which to complete them comes to an end in December after which the valuation begins. If you meet the criteria, you will graduate as a fellow through a virtual convocation.
What Next?
You can still continue to make an impact on the society with the knowledge and exposure you have gained from the fellowship. The MCN also allows for an opportunity to mentor the new class of fellows and work closely with them by being a part of the MCN Alumni Network.
As for me, I continue to work with the MEC Model United Nations Society, empowering youth and community to realise their true potential!
These are some of the events I have been part of with the MEC MUNSoc in the recent past, among others:
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