Record number of UCL students selected as Millennium Fellows 2021-22

Run by the Millennium Campus Network (MCN) and United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI), the Millennium Fellowship Scheme is an international leadership development programme through which undergraduate students help to further the SDGs in their communities.

This year, over 25,000 applicants from more than 2,200 campuses worldwide applied to join the Class of 2021, with 2,000 Millennium Fellows chosen to take part.

The selective Fellowship is a semester-long leadership development program that convenes, challenges, and celebrates student leadership for UN goals. As part of the application process, students are asked to propose a project they will undertake during the scheme, which runs annually from August to December. Successful applicants form cohorts on their campus, meeting throughout their tenure to share best practice on their individual projects or work together on larger initiatives.

Selected by the scheme to coordinate efforts on campus, UCL’s 2021–22 Campus Directors, Summer Wyatt-Buchan (UCL Geography) and Valentina Laugeri (UCL Political Science), have joined forces with four other Millennium Fellows at UCL to further develop their project, ‘Next Chapter’. Focusing on SDG 3, Good Health & Wellbeing, the project aims to facilitate the integration of young refugees through interactive language classes and weekly events and workshops.

Discussing the project, Valentina said: “Our aim is to help them forget what they've been through, even if it's only for a few minutes, and to show them that they have support in their new community. We believe that being a refugee may be the end of one chapter but also the start of a new one.”

"We look forward to welcoming and supporting refugee children, while aiming to empower each child to recognise the support structures around them,” added Summer.

Currently, Summer and Valentina work with one refugee centre - but hope that the Fellowship will allow them to expand.

Simon Knowles, UCL’s Head of Coordination (SDGs), said: “The success of our students is testament to their efforts to help achieve the SDGs with their student society, volunteering project or in their spare time. The scheme is an excellent opportunity for these students and their activities to form part of an international programme, while making our campus and local community more sustainable.”

Sam Vaghar, Executive Director and Co-founder of MCN, said: “On every campus and in every community, student leaders are committed to making positive contributions while committed to our ethos: empathetic, humble, inclusive leadership. Emerging leaders need requisite training, connections, and recognition to deepen their social impact as undergraduates and throughout their careers. Partnering with UNAI enables us to engage more students, providing a powerful framework to help them convene, take action, and elevate the important contributions they make. I congratulate UCL’s Fellows for their bold commitment to strengthen community and help make UN goals reality.”

The UCL Millennium Fellows are:

• Aishwarya Shah
• Allen-Christian Ilica
• Ariana Razavi
• Aurora Pinelli
• Chun Yu Hugo Pang
• Dagny Reese
• Elisa Valentin
• Ellie Collins
• Henriette Tabbert
• Kushagr Nigam
• Lorraine Lauriot Dit Prévost
• Maria Patouna
• Mariyam Fawzik
• Maya Saengkrachang
• Navya Dikshit
• Nicholas Ng
• Noah Weichgrebe
• Summer Wyatt-Buchan
• Teodor Yankov
• Valentina Laugeri
• William Li
• Yibin Liu
• Yuan Camuseau

Links

• See the full list of Millennium Fellows
• Millennium Fellowship Scheme
• Millennium Campus Network
• United Nations Academic Impact
• UCL SDGs Initiative

Image

• Caption: UCL Campus Directors 2021 Valentina Laugeri (left) and Summer Wyatt-Buchan (right). Credit: Valentina Laugeri and Summer Wyatt-Buchan.