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 ELLIE RUSHING, A MILLENNIUM FELLOW FOR THE CLASS OF 2018.
Rollins College | Florida, United States | Advancing SDG 1 & UNAI 1
" I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work alongside like-minded individuals with a passion for stimulating change. I want to learn from my peers while effectively building a project that can benefit our community. I am constatnly inspired by those around me-- the people I meet and experiences we share. I cannot wait to build on this opportunity to feel more involved with my community, all while representing my college and country. "
Millennium Fellowship Project: Sustainable gardening in rural Rwanda
This project defines what it means to build trusting relationships and collaborative projects with other cultures and communities. Although it provides a small-scale path towards solving issues of malnutrition and lack of education, this solution was created by the members of this community. The community asked for this project to address hunger and environmental education and led the way in ensuring its practicality. Once the plan was created, I simply provided the resources, research and evaluations to monitor and continue its success. The community members of Duha Complex School are the ones who make this garden possible.
Moreover, this project teaches important agricultural techniques specific to Rwandan culture. There are two plots of land for two types of gardens: a traditional, horizontally growing vegetable garden and a vertically growing “kitchen” garden that is specific to Rwanda. This kitchen garden is nothing that I have never seen before. It is tiered and looks similar to a stacked cake, which, according to the community members, requires less water, less fertilizer, and allows more yields to come from the soil. By incorporating these different styles, students are able to learn from their community members on specific cultural practices and understand how the kitchen garden approaches sustainability in a unique and innovative way.
This garden brings a community together to fight against hunger, unsustainable practices and lack of education. It shows the over 90 students who have been involved the importance of their physical environment, while giving them daily meals and setting an example on approaching and implementing international project collaboration.
The measurable goals of the project start with the fact that we raise the $600 needed to install a water tank at the school to allow the students to collect rain water. This prevents the garden from getting charged by the school to use the water and makes sure the students don’t have to travel far to get water from the lake. Moreover, the garden created two jobs for community members.
About the Millennium Fellow
I am a senior at Rollins College double majoring in Environmental Studies and Communication Studies. I am the Editor-in-Chief of Rollins' student newspaper, The Sandspur, and recently completed an internship with the South Florida Sun Sentinel. Moreover, I am the co-lead sustainability coordinator for the Rollins Sustainability Program. I’ve spent two summers in Rwanda, where my passion for community work and environmental education blossomed. I am a journalist by trade and an environmentalist at heart and love combining the two to tell impactful stories about people, cultures and the environment.
