Deadline: 10-Jun-22
The African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) has launched the Gender Responsive Agriculture Systems Policy (GRASP) Fellowship, a career development program that targets mid-career African women in the policy field to catalyze the design and implementation of gender-responsive agricultural policies across Africa.
An initiative of African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the GRASP Fellowship is fostering policy change across institutions and national governance systems for women’s empowerment. Through the GRASP Fellowship, AWARD seeks to grow a pool of confident and capable African women to lead policy changes to improve African smallholders’ livelihoods.
The GRASP Fellowship will foster mentoring partnerships and networks to catalyze cross-learning between seasoned and emerging experts, incentivize collaborations for evidenced-based policies, and equip mid-career women with the skills to lead policy processes for improved livelihoods of African men and women smallholders.
Structure and Implementation
- Immersive Training Courses: The GRASP Fellowship will support selected AWARD Policy Fellows for a two-year nonresidential program that will involve intensive customized virtual and face-to-face mentoring and training programs. The training will tackle how the policy professionals can become adept at being effective negotiators, sharpen their skills to design gender-responsive policies, and build collaborative relationships with different stakeholders for desired policy outcomes.
- Three-tier mentoring program: The GRASP Fellowship will entail a three-tiered mentoring process where mentors and mentees, at different stages in their careers, develop mutually beneficial and supportive relationships around their professional and personal capacities.
- Policy Innovation Projects: The Policy Innovation Projects PIPs are the GRASP flagship interventions that will provide hands-on practical experience in collaborating toward gender-responsive policy development in the agricultural sector.
Eligibility Criteria
- The first cohort of the Fellowship targets participants from Malawi, Nigeria, and Zambia.
- Applicants must have at least a master’s degree and 10 years of experience in gender, agriculture, and food systems, working on policy issues at national, regional, or continental levels
- Applicants must be affiliated with either government organizations, non-government, private sector, development, civil society, regional and sub-regional communities, or academia.
Ideal AWARD Policy Fellows
The Fellowship targets women policy practitioners who can meet a range of criteria. The ideal AWARD Policy Fellows will:
- Explain the top policy challenges or questions they are working on
- Show how they have played a leadership role in policy development and implementation, particularly in projects at the nexus of agricultural development, food systems, and gender equality
- Clearly articulate what policy idea they will work on under the policy innovation projects.
For more information, visit https://awardfellowships.org/gender-responsive-agriculture-systems-policy-grasp-fellowship/
