Cultivating Inclusion for Food Security Fellowship

Deadline: 05-Apr-2024

The Gender and Youth Activity (GAYA) has launched applications for Cultivating Inclusion for Food Security Fellowship which is a capacity-strengthening opportunity for field-based emergency and resilience food security implementers who are interested in using qualitative methods to increase gender and youth inclusion.

Over three months, a cohort of 16-20 members participate in both an in-person workshop, regular online meetings, and independent work to develop innovative solutions to increase gender and youth inclusion in their programs.

The Cultivate Fellowship supports fellows to design and use qualitative methods to address their program-specific questions and deepen their contextual understanding of social inclusion and resilience dynamics of their activities, in order to adapt programming for transformative change. By the end of the Cultivate Fellowship, fellows will:

• Collaborate with peers and explore how systems thinking tools and strategies can deepen the understanding of inclusive resilience dynamics.
• Design learning questions, a qualitative inquiry process, and qualitative inquiry tools to answer program-specific questions.
• Conduct this qualitative inquiry within their own program, including:

• Collecting data;
• Analyzing results;
• Convening a team to apply learning within the program; and
• Revising the tools for broader use.
• Engage with a robust Alumni Network committed to creative, collaborative, and critical innovation around inclusive resilience-focused qualitative inquiry.

What is the Time Commitment for the Fellowship?

• Virtual Preparatory Meetings: 3 Weeks, 2.5 hours per week
• In-Person Workshop: 5 Days, 8 hours per day
• Virtual Follow-Up Meetings: 6-8 Weeks,1.5 hours per week + time to complete a qualitative inquiry project

What is Expected of Participants? 

• Fellows’ program/activity will fund travel cost (e.g., travel, accommodation, per diem) associated with attending an in-person workshop
• Fellows will engage in three months of activities, including, but not limited to, virtual preparatory meetings, a 5-day in-person workshop, biweekly virtual meetings following the workshop, informal and formal technical mentorship calls, and a virtual learning event
• During the Fellowship, Fellows (with the support of GAYA) will be required to complete an inclusive resilience-focused qualitative inquiry project within their program/activity.

What does completing a qualitative inquiry project look like?

• As a central part of the Cultivate Fellowship, fellows will use qualitative methods to inform program adaptations on their activity, with the end goal of creating more inclusive programs. This project includes but is not limited to:
  • Engagement with program leadership and technical leads to identify a challenge and associated learning question to study
  • Developing and implementing a process and tools for the qualitative inquiry
  • Conducting a preliminary sensemaking process to discuss the results of the qualitative inquiry
  • Creating a clear action plan for expanding the qualitative inquiry over the next three months
  • Implementing the action plan and applying learning within the program
  • Integration of findings from QI within program
  • Documentation of learning and project outcomes
  • Share the findings of and program changes based on the expanded qualitative inquiry at the final learning event

Who Should Apply?

• Prospective applicants should apply as a pair working within the same program, ideally representing:
  • Applicant 1: Gender, youth, and/or social inclusion components or the equivalent
  • Applicant 2: Monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) and/or collaboration, learning, and adaptation (CLA) or adaptive management equivalent
• The current cohort is aimed at implementers working on Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA)-funded Activities and other USAID strategic partners located in Asia and the Pacific.

For more information, visit FSN Network.