Yashasvi Suri Millennium Fellowship 2023

MILLENNIUM FELLOWSHIP 2023
1. Name of your project: Project Dhyan
2. In what stage is your Project at?

It is an ongoing Project, working for the past three years.
3. Briefly describe your project in an easy-to-understand way:

Climate change is a grave and mounting threat to our wellbeing and a healthy planet.
People’s health, lives and livelihoods, as well as property and critical infrastructure are
being increasingly adversely affected by climate hazards such as heatwaves, storms,
drought and flooding. IPCC report 2021 suggest that without immediate and deep
emissions reductions across all sectors, limiting global warming to 1.5°C, as proposed in
Paris Agreement, is beyond reach. The capital city of Delhi, located in the tropics is
extremely vulnerable to intensive heat waves in the recent time. The (thermometer)
mercury of Delhi over the years have been breaking every past records.
When our actions today will shape how people adapt and nature responds to increasing
climate risks, students and teachers of Department of Geography came together to
constitute the Project Dhyan- A Community Outreach Disaster Preparedness Program for
heat wave awareness campaign in Delhi. The Project by focusing on SDG11, SDG13, SDG
3 and SDG 10, organizes various programs and initiatives in capacity building and
community action within and outside the campus premises. It also tries to document the
social memories of women who had experienced climate related disasters as Survivors,
Rescuers and Relief workers shall be documented.
4. What is your role:

You have to select from the given options
If choices doesn’t match- then select- Other- and then write “Student Coordinator, Project
Dhyan”
5. How many lives will be positively impacted by your Project during the Millennium
Fellowship:
You have to select a specific number from the dropped down options:
2000-4999
6. How do you measure your impact during these 4 months? How do you know you have
been successful? Please give quantifiable goals.
Project Dhyan has been active in organizing various events to create awareness among
citizens of Delhi about climate hazards like heatwave and sustainable measures to cope up
with it.
We shall launch a climate literacy program, to further widen the scope of our community
action and mainstream the climate discourses in India. The proposed program shall have
three components:
a) In order to take climate change action to the young India, our Climate Change
Literacy Program will be primarily targeted towards school children in Delhi. In
this regard, we shall collaborate with government schools in Delhi, and prepare
climate change sensitization modules by using story telling as a pedagogic practice.
b) Climate Justice Campaign: Organizing Street Plays across the city to bring the
public attention to the challenges.
c) Archiving everydayness of climate disasters and survivals- documenting and
archiving social memories of women who had experienced climate-related disasters
and organizing exhibitions around the theme for gendering climate change
discourses.
Ascertaining the number of impact to a project which can have both implicit and explicit
effects would be inaccurate. Nonetheless, Project Dhyan hopes to have an influence on
about 2000-5000 people.
7. Please choose one of the 17 SDG that your work most directly addresses.
SDG 13: Climate Action
8. Which of the 10 UN Academic Impact Principles is most applicable to your work?

The 9th UN Academic Impact Principles:
# “A commitment to promoting sustainability through education”
9. Social entrepreneur Bryan Stevenson has emphasized the power of proximity - that
you are close to the people you are trying to help. As Stevenson shares, It's actually
“in proximity to [injustices] that we hear things that we won't otherwise hear, that
we'll see things we won't otherwise see.”With this in mind: Are you part of the
community you are trying to help, or have you built meaningful relationships with
community members? If this is not possible, please explain the research and
preparatory work you have done to feel confident that you understand the
complexities of the issues you are addressing.
10. Fast forward to the end of the Fellowship in December 2023. If your local newspaper
was summing up why your Project mattered as it relates to UN goals, what would
they say? The Project, in this case, is the one you are leading prior to and during the
Fellowship.
Delhi’s Women Warriors of Climate Change

A group of young women from Delhi’s oldest women college come together for
safeguarding the dream and aspirations of upcoming generations on planet earth. By
standing under the banner of Project Dhyan, these young women are not ready to give up
their hope nor ready to wait for the destiny to take its course, rather they believe in hard
work and community action in mitigating a fate which is unavoidable. Educate for social
change is their slogan. Following American Meteorologist Max Mayfield, “Preparation
through education is less costly than learning through tragedy”, this student for climate
action group believe in putting education into action to avoid an epochal crisis and its
imminent tragedies.
Schools based climate literacy program of the Project received wider attention for the past
few months as it used the tools of critical pedagogies in educating younger India about
climate change and sustainable practices. Through these students, the Project has
successfully reached out to a wider audience. Series of street plays organized by the Project
volunteers across Lutyens Delhi was both entertaining as well as thought provoking. It
urged people to stop othering this tragedy and rise to secure the future of this beautiful
planet. Thus the Project through its various initiatives have given life to United Nations’
Sustainable Development Goals and good wills of Paris Agreement. Moreover, in their
campaign, they have brough gender equity to the center of climate change discourses. As
one volunteer put it “We can’t fight climate change without fighting for gender stereotypes.
Therefore we are fighting both climate change and gender inequality for a sustainable and
gender just future”.
11. Could you deliver your project virtually? Do you need to set new goals? Is it already
built to operate virtually?
As Project Dhyan was developed at the peak of pandemic and lockdown, efforts were made
to conceive and run the program remotely whenever face-to-face interaction was hindered.
Thus, Project Dhyan has a well-equipped social media wing with an experience of
conducting online campaigns, webinars, discussions etc.
Since social media has become the news hub for today’s generation, we are effectively
using its potential in our awareness campaigns to reaching out to a wider audience.
12. What drives you in your work? In other words, why do you personally care about
the issues you are working on? Please share a story if relevant.
I have always taken a keen interest in understanding environmental issues and educating
my own siblings and family about it. It is this interest in environment has convinced me to
pursue an undergraduate degree in Geography- a discipline which magnificently engages
with human-environment interaction. My exposure to Project Dhyan gave me further
insights about global environmental issues like climate change and the question of
sustainability.
Recently, I have experienced a change in my hometown related to changes in temperature
as well as the overall climate. My city experienced a heat wave for the first time in
history and it was really disheartening to see that the city I grew up in with greenery all
around has been turned this way. The ever-increasing construction works and the related
destruction of local vegetation have led to such a scenario. I am really concerned and
passionate about dealing with the issue of heat wave and ever-increasing temperature
changes as I believe this has also become a nationwide problem.
I have already participated in various heat wave awareness programs and plan to
participate more. I believe to make a change we need to start local and for this starting
from my own college to the city I study in, I want to reach by own state and educate the
people of my hometown to make a change in their daily practices. I want to participate at
a wider space and reach more people, especially in my own city.
Look at the sample and re-write your story (this is written by Ananya
Priyadarshini).
Ever since I was a child, I have been deeply interested in environmental issues of
various kinds; I have been a part of the eco-club of my school, and in my personal life I
spend a lot of time tending to destitute animals, and ensuring that people around me
live more sustainably. I remember clearly, when I was seven, some people had
gathered to chop down a mango tree that grew in my neighbourhood to clear space for
paking. When I saw them, I ran towards the people, urged them not to cut down the
tree, and started crying. I do not recall what the reasons were and if it was me crying,
but the people withdrew from cutting the tree and it still stands tall today. While this
incident has become a story that my family now laughingly cherishes, it is something
that means a lot to me because I was successful in standing up for something I believe
in. All environmental concerns are very personal to me, and this includes climate
change. The extent to which the issues of climate change are neglected is beyond
surprising to me, and it is high time that every individual is aware about this, accepts
the reality, and consequently works towards controlling it. Thousands of creatures
have to suffer because of the careless endeavours of humankind, which is not ideal. It
is my calling in life to work towards resolving such issues, and ensuring that they are
effective and impactful.
13. Why do you want to be a Millennium Fellow? How will you use this distinction
towards your future social impact work?
Millennium Fellowship is a unique leadership program, which has been successful in
inculcating and improving partnership building and community impact skills amongst
undergraduate students. Being a part of Project Dhyan for the past one and half years, I
have seen how my peers in Project Dhyan, got benefitted and contributed being Millennium
Fellows.
Therefore, to become a Millennium Fellow is always one of my big dreams. Because this
fellowship would provide me with wide range of opportunity to develop my leadership
skills as well as facilitate in strengthening my knowledge base. Interaction with people of
different theoretical perspectives and thought culture, enable me to get intellectually
molded and thus master the art of cross-cultural communication.
My involvement in the Millennium Fellowship shall be bipartite in nature. I believe with
my analytical skills and empirical knowledge from grounded experiences of working with
community shall be insightful to my fellow participants. As I, along with my Project is
working on community-oriented climate action, through my dedicated activities the
Millennium Fellowship shall become a Climate Action Fellowship.
14. MCN values that our community prioritizes- empathetic, humble, inclusive
leadership. Please choose one of these values and share how this applies to your
leadership.
According to me, inclusivity should be the fundamental motive of a leader. Because the
ideals of inclusivity create an environment where everyone feels welcomed, valued, and
empowered to contribute to the success of the organization/initiative. To be inclusive, one
needs to be empathetic as well as humble to fellow beings. By practicing inclusive
leadership, a leader shall celebrate differences and diversity. The diversity in thought and
action, thus, will enable the endeavor in successfully achieving its targeted goals.
I have always tried my best to be inclusive and include everyone on my team and make
them feel safe and empowered to share their thoughts and concerns. The sense of
inclusivity has taught me to be a good listener and collective decision maker. This has
helped me in acting as an efficient student coordinator of the Project Dhyan.

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MILLENNIUM FELLOWSHIP 2023

1. Name of your project: Project Dhyan

2. In what stage is your Project at?

3. Briefly describe your project in an easy-to-understand way:

4. What is your role:

8. Which of the 10 UN Academic Impact Principles is most applicable to your work?

Delhi’s Women Warriors of Climate Change

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