ABOUT THE MILLENNIUM FELLOWSHIP - CLASS OF 2018
United Nations Academic Impact and MCN are proud to partner on the Millennium Fellowship. In the three months the application was open in 2018, students applied to join the Class of 2018 on 285 campuses across 57 nations. 30 campuses worldwide (just 11%) were selected to host the 402 Millennium Fellows in the global pilot this year.
The Class of 2018 is bold, innovative, and inclusive. During the Millennium Fellowship, Millennium Fellows' dedicated 48,785 hours and their 214 unique projects positively impacted the lives of 393,449 people worldwide.
UNITED NATIONS ACADEMIC IMPACT AND MCN PROUDLY PRESENT AYLA MAHMUD, A MILLENNIUM FELLOW AND CAMPUS DIRECTOR FOR THE CLASS OF 2018.
King's College London | London, United Kingdom | Advancing SDG 3 & UNAI 2
" I am honoured to have been selected as a Millennium Fellow and given the opportunity to network and share ideas with passionate leaders from around the world to reach a set of common goals.
UNMCN will provide so many hardworking organisations with a global platform to share ideas and strategies to bring about a social change. Working with the UNMCN I hope to increase awareness surrounding student wellbeing and eliminate the stigma regarding mental health. "
Millennium Fellowship Project: Dental Student Council
The Dental Student Council formally represents dental students at King's College London, thus we represent approximately 700 students. For our project we were working towards SDG 3: Good Health and Wellbeing.
Firstly, we have done this by attending frequent committee and board meetings at our university such as the Staff Student Liaison Committee. Here we raise any issues and concerns that our peers have voiced either by reaching out to us directly or expressed at our Student Council Meetings. This year we have had issues with the college's personal tutor scheme, where students did not feel that tutors were communicating with them efficiently. By highlighting this point to the senior faculty staff it was resolved.
Furthermore, we had developed a peer assisted learning scheme. We have done this by reaching out to students and encouraging them to become helpers on clinical floors to students junior to them. Often students find it easier to ask for academic help from older years as apposed to professors, this this has proved useful and we have received a lot of positive feedback from this initiative. In addition, we have created a number of short videos which students can access online which go through key concepts to aid learning. We have had requests from students to make more for a wider variety of topics and look forward to doing this.
Finally, we have spend a lot of time developing the wellbeing branch of our committee. We have developed handbooks explaining to students the support services available to them. We have also organised social wellbeing events such as movie nights to encourage students to take a break from work and take care of themselves. We have also had our representatives trained by the college to be peer supporters so that we can learn more about wellbeing and how we can support our fellow peers.
We have planned collaborations with other groups at the university including Smile Society and the Medical Student's Association. We are also in the process of securing sponsorship from an external dental organisation and plan to use the financial support to develop our wellbeing branch further.
About the Millennium Fellow
Ayla Mahmud is a third year dental student studying at King’s College London, United Kingdom. She has been a member of the Student Dental Council for 3 years and was also an active year representative during her previous Biomedical Science degree. These experiences have developed her understanding regarding the difficulties students face whilst they are enrolled in higher education. She has also been involved with wellbeing initiatives including volunteering with the homeless and working to remove the stigma surrounding this issue in society, as well as volunteering with children suffering from physical and mental disabilities. She is passionate about helping others and aspires to become a dentist with a particular focus on providing dental care for people who do not have access to such facilities.
