2015 Rockefeller AWARD Fellowship Opportunity for African Women Agriculturists

AWARD is a career-development program that equips top women agricultural scientists across sub-Saharan Africa to accelerate agricultural gains by strengthening their research and leadership skills, through tailored fellowships.

African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) is a catalyst for innovations with high potential to contribute to the prosperity and well-being of African smallholder farmers, most of whom are women.

AWARD Fellows benefit from a two-year career-development program focused on fostering mentoring partnerships, building science skills, and developing leadership capacity. Following a highly competitive process, the fellowships are awarded on the basis of intellectual merit, leadership capacity, and the potential of the scientist’s research to improve the daily lives of smallholder farmers, especially women.

Since its inception, AWARD has received applications from more than 3,500 women for a total of 390 available fellowships. On average, only the top nine percent of applicants are selected each year.
AWARD Fellows remain in their place of employment or study, while benefiting from the following professional opportunities:

1. Fostering Mentoring Partnerships

• AWARD Mentoring Orientation Workshop (five days) for each fellow and her chosen mentor to set three achievable career-development goals. These goals are focused on building the fellows’ scientific and leadership skills, which are needed to deliver gender-responsive agricultural research, such as collecting gender-disaggregated data
• Monthly mentoring meetings for one year with a mentor (a senior scientist or professional) to work together on the above goals
• Support to mentor a junior woman scientist of the fellow’s choice in second year of fellowship

2. Building Science Skills

• Professional association membership support for two years
• Support to attend a science conference
• AWARD Science Skills Course (seven days), including one-day module on gender-responsive agricultural research for development
• Competition for advanced science training (post-master’s and post-doctoral fellows only), composed of either a three-  to-nine month research attachment or a one- to-six week short science course

3. Developing Leadership Capacity

• AWARD Leadership Skills Course (five days) for post-bachelor fellows
• AWARD Women’s Leadership and Management Course (seven days) for post-master’s and post-doctoral fellows
• Support to hold a role-modeling event in the fellow’s chosen community or institution

4. Tracking Learning, Monitoring, and Evaluation

• Participation in sub-regional AWARD Progress Monitoring Meetings

What is not offered:

• Funding to support the fellow’s academic studies
• Research grants

AWARD Timeline:

1. Call for applications for the 2015 AWARD Fellowships: July 7, 2014
2. Application deadline: August 8, 2014
3. Winners informed: December 2014
4. Public announcement of winners: January 2015
5. Program begins: February/March 2015

Click Here to Apply  http://www.awardfellowships.org/the-award-fellowship/applicants