UCD’s first UN Millennium Fellows graduate
Wednesday, 18 December, 2024
Pictured above left-right: Aisling Maloney and Katie O'Sullivan
Nine UCD students recently graduated from the 2024 class of the Millennium Fellowship, a global leadership programme jointly organised by the Millennium Campus Network (MCN) and the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI).
This was the first time a team from UCD was selected for the semester-long development programme designed to help students transform their passion for social impact into action.
Open to students from any discipline, applicants submit a project proposal that aligns with one or more of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The UCD team’s campus directors were fourth year law with politics students Aisling Maloney and Katie O’Sullivan.
“We saw an Instagram post about the Millennium Fellowship last April and decided to apply,” says Aisling, who is also a youth activist and Chair of UCD Politics and International Relations Society.
“Our proposal was for a UCD Student Voter Empowerment Project. We wanted to prepare young people more for the 2024 general election.”
The Fellowship encourages collaboration from the outset.
“You have to apply individually and then as a group because most Campus Hubs will typically have 8-20 Millennium Fellows. We messaged friends, put a call-out on the UCD Politics Society Instagram and in our weekly Politics Society email. Eventually, we got a cohort together.”
Each group selected to proceed to the second stage of the application process nominates two campus directors. Aisling and Katie, who are both UCD Student Ambassadors and Campus Assistants, were put forward by their group and interviewed over Zoom by Fellowship organisers in July. They were asked about their team management and communication skills.
“The person interviewing me was in a different time zone and it was three o'clock in the morning their time,” says Katie, quipping, “I was going to try to end the interview just so they could go to bed!”
In August they found out their application on behalf of UCD had been successful. Aisling, Katie and their team set about improving political engagement among the UCD student body.
“We did a voter registration drive in front of the concourse. We made a QR code and students could just scan it and register to vote. We also produced a handbook on everything you need to know about elections,” says Aisling, and this 34-page booklet about the Irish political system includes information on how to research candidates, Ireland’s PR-STV voting system and much more.
“We did a survey for the handbook inviting 50 non-politics students to think about what information they would like us to include in it,” she adds.
Millennium Fellows also attended interesting weekly webinars which encouraged their ambitions and expanded their horizons and career networks.
“We were introduced to people from a wide range of industries,” says Katie. “Every week the webinar guests were completely different. One week it might be a violinist and the next, an expert on migration.”
Last month the Millennium Fellows class of 2024 graduated in a Zoom ceremony. There were some 4,000 Fellows from over 280 universities and 48 nationalities represented. Aisling and Katie’s teammates were Tom Andrews (history and politics), Rhiannon Clarke Downey (law), Ella Rose Feeney (law), Wedge Egan (economics and politics), Matthew Murphy (philosophy, politics and economics), Evan Fitzpatrick (history and politics) and Lhamo Fitzsimons (law).
Now, as the December 31st deadline approaches for the 2025 iteration of this leadership development programme, Aisling and Katie are encouraging more UCD students to (opens in a new window)apply.
“It’s quite a long application process so I would advise anyone applying to stick with it,” says Katie.
“It needs some coordination at the start,” agrees Aisling. “Start early and once you’ve got a team together, make sure there is good communication and that everyone stays in contact with each other and knows what’s going on. The most important thing is to pick a project you are passionate about.”