IFP is no longer accepting new applicants. The final cohort has been selected, bringing the total number of IFP Fellows from India to around 330.
IFP will conclude its work by 2013.
The International Fellowships Program was launched with a grant from the Ford Foundation in 2001. The program offered fellowships for post-graduate study to leaders from underserved communities in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Russia.
Fellowship recipients are exceptional individuals with demonstrated social commitment and academic achievement. Typically, they are men and women who have overcome obstacles such as poverty and discrimination to gain access to higher education, and aspire to work for social justice in their home communities upon completion of their studies.
As Ford Foundation President Luis Ubiņas noted, "IFP's impact has reached far beyond the Fellows...It is reshaping how governments, universities and other scholarship programs are thinking about building diverse and talented leaders committed to our most pressing global issues. And it is proving that leaders from marginalized communities can compete academically in the most challenging environments and return to their home countries to make a difference."
Intended as a decade-long program, IFP now enters its impact and learning phase, focusing on assessing and disseminating the knowledge generated by its groundbreaking model of leadership development. As part of its mandate, IFP will work to shape policies that open the doors of higher education to a new generation of social justice leaders.
The Ford Foundation is a resource for innovative people and institutions worldwide. Its goals are to strengthen democratic values, reduce poverty and injustice, promote international cooperation and advance human achievement. This has been its purpose for more than half a century. Founded in 1936, the Foundation operated as a local philanthropy in the state of Michigan until 1950, when it expanded to become a national and international foundation. Since its inception it has been an independent, nonprofit, nongovernmental organization.
A fundamental challenge facing every society is to create political, economic and social systems that promote peace, human welfare and the sustainability of the environment on which life depends. The Foundation believes that the best way to meet this challenge is to encourage initiatives by those living and working closest to where problems are located; to promote collaboration among the nonprofit, government and business sectors, and to ensure participation by men and women from diverse communities and at all levels of society. In the Foundation's experience, such activities help build common understanding, enhance excellence, enable people to improve their lives and reinforce their commitment to society. The Ford Foundation is one source of support for these activities.
The International Fellowships Program is the largest single program ever supported by the Ford Foundation. By investing $335 million in ten years, the Foundation expects to build on a half century of support for higher education. In the past Foundation programs have maintained the highest educational standards. Ford fellowship recipients have gone on to become leaders in institutions around the world and have helped build global knowledge in fields ranging across the natural and social sciences as well as the humanities and the arts. The International Fellowships Program draws on this tradition and underscores the Foundation's belief that education enables people to improve their own lives as well as to assist others in the common pursuit of more equitable and just societies.
The General Guidelines :-
The Program is especially designed to support candidates from groups that have historically lacked access to higher education. Eligible candidates who belong to marginalized and excluded groups and communities such as scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, other backward classes, religious minorities, women, physically challenged and those with other kinds of socio-economic deprivation are encouraged to apply.
