Call for Application: Resilience Fund Fellowship 2020

Application Deadline: November 15th 2019

The Resilience Fund Fellowship has been launched to build a platform for cross-sectoral, global, and interdisciplinary collaboration between civil society actors, human-rights activists, journalists, artists, scholars, policy makers, grassroots community leaders, and others working to counter the effects of organized crime.

The Fellowship will provide support and opportunities to a cohort of individuals from around the world. Each year a chosen theme will focus on a global issue, on which Resilience Fellows will collaborate on finding new perspectives and responses, drawn from their diverse – yet shared – experiences.

Theme for 2020: Disappearances Related to Organized Crime

For 2020, the theme of the Resilience Fellowship is: “Disappearances Related to Organized Crime”. Within this framework Fellows will be asked to combine their various perspectives in the development of collaborative outputs, as well as to represent the Fund as “Resilience Fund Ambassadors,” who will raise awareness of the theme, issues, and the importance of civil society in countering organized crime.

Disappearances have been used to politically or criminally repress opponents and those who speak and act against human rights abuses. This global issue is prevalent around the world, making it a relevant and extremely important theme to many potential Fellows.

Working areas of potential candidates can include but are not limited to:

• Killings by organized crime groups, for example in Mexico and Central America, and the state’s role in extrajudicial killings in the drug war in thePhilippines.
• Missing migrants travelling from Africa to Europe, such as in Libya, the Horn of Africa or the Sahel.
• Human trafficking and harvesting of human organs.
• Arbitrary and unaccountable detention

The Fellowship is based on a three-pronged approach:

• Sponsorship: Providing financial support so that Resilience Fellows will have the time and resources for their individual work and a collaborative project during the fellowship year. Grants of USD $15 000 per Fellow will be awarded for one year.
• Networking: Offering mentorship opportunities with experts from GI-TOC, as well as bringing Resilience Fellows together via a residency retreat to begin the collaborative project to be undertaken during their fellowship year.
• Dissemination: Creating a platform for Resilience Fellows to publicly share their work and ideas — via such venues as festivals, conferences, civil society forums, and national and international publications — which will widen public discourse, deepen engagement with society, and invite the support and participation from the general public and, ultimately, policymakers.

Requirements:

Each fellow will receive $15,000 to be executed with no other limitation than the principles of professionalism, integrity and transparency, the proposal presentedin the application form, the terms and conditions of the Fellowship agreement, and the implementation of collaborative actions with other fellows.

The Fellowship will start on January 15 and end December 31, 2020. Fellows must be available to participate in the following activities as part of the Fellowships agreement:

• Participate in an induction and appointment of a mentor
• Attend a residency retreat
• Participate in a “Resilience Dialogue” at the end of the year

Selection criteria

• Participants should be from countries disproportionately affected by organized crime, and/or from developing countries.
• Participants should ideally work closely within communities severely affected by disappearances related to organized crime, or have strong ties within them, and should have ongoing or established projects or engagement.
• Participants should be able to demonstrate how the funding and support will be used.
• Participants who have direct experience in their communities’ issues, related to the annual theme, are particularly encouraged to apply.
• Participants must be fluent in at least one of the three languages: Spanish, English and French.
• The prior work of participants should demonstrate a commitment to the ethics and values of the Resilience Fund.

For More Information:

Visit the Official Webpage of the Resilience Fund Fellowship 2020