According to the Millenium Campus Network: “Millennium Fellows are university undergraduates selected based on their leadership on sustainable development-related projects that advance the SDGs in their communities. As Millennium Fellows, they participate in a semester-long leadership development programme to improve their student organising, partnership building and community impact skills.
Nosipho Gamalitshoyo, Sello Hlongwane,
Anako Fihlani and Leigh-Angela Barnard

This year, the Millennium Fellowship Class of 2022 includes over 3 000 Millennium Fellows on 200 campuses in 37 nations participating in the programme.

The UWC Millennium Fellows, who graduated last month, are:
Anako Fihlani (4th year LLB student)
Sello Hlongwane (BA 3rd year, psychology, politics and ethics student)
Leigh-Angela Barnard (2nd year LLB student)
Nosipho Gamalitshoyo (4th year LLB student)
The group selected one UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) and had to create a project that effectively reflects their response to the SDG.

Sello Hlongwane is the UWC campus director for the fellows and said: “We set out to work on a project where we will be responding to hunger. The main challenge we faced was lack of resources to achieve one of the Sustainable Development Goals.”

Anako Fihlani is the co-founder of the Inkululeko project that aims to assist young people (from 11 to 18-years-old) from surrounding neighbourhoods in Cape Town with access to quality education (tertiary education) tools and knowledge to get into university and to learn about mental health and how it’s related to socio-economic issues.

She said: “We do this by providing mentoring programmes, tutoring and workshops from time to time that aim to provide quality education for young people.”

Leigh-Angela Barnard said she was unsure about navigating student life on campus when she first arrived at UWC, but being a Millenium Fellow has helped her become more confident. “I heard about the fellowship from another student, and she said this would be good for me to develop my leadership skills.”

She added: “This degree can be challenging once you graduate, and this exposes me to so many things. I am mentoring first-year law students and I just linked the fellowship to that.”

Nosipho Gamalitshoyo says the fact that she studied later in life has motivated her to now want to give back. “I refused to accept poverty. I may not have had a choice in terms of being born in that situation but I had a choice whether to accept it, and I refused,” she says.

Nosipho adds: “I started with completing my Matric and then after that I was not satisfied with just the Matric certificate. When I finally got into university I looked at how I can give back to the community and reach out to those who may be like me but feel there is no hope.”
About the Millennium Fellowship
The Millennium Campus Network (MCN) and the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) are proud to present the Millennium Fellowship Class of 2022, an ambitious programme to help make the Sustainable Development Goals and UNAI principles a reality.

The Class of 2022 Millennium Fellows have been selected among a record-breaking 31,397 applicants from over 2,417 campuses across 140 nations.

Millennium Fellows are university undergraduates selected based on their leadership on sustainable development-related projects that advance the SDGs in their communities.

As Millennium Fellows, they participate in a semester-long leadership development programme to improve their student organising, partnership building and community impact skills.

The Millennium Fellowship Class of 2022 includes over 3000 Millennium Fellows on 200 campuses in 37 nations that are participating in the programme this year.

The Class of 2022 is on track to engage in projects collectively advancing all 17 Sustainable Development Goals and all 10 UNAI Principles.