Tuesday, November 08, 2011

WomenChangeMaker Fellowship 2012

WomenChangeMakers Fellowship focuses on identifying, supporting and connecting social entrepreneurs who head established, successful organizations that work for women’s empowerment, address systemic gender inequalities and positively transform society. WomenChangeMakers provides its fellows with access to professional resources and partners (E.g. consultancies and training by Booz & Co., Mercuri Urval, Ogilvy and others); with financial support (e.g. a yearly stipend over the three-year support cycle) and with connections (e.g. fellowship, mentorship, partnerships and attendance to key professional meetings), with the goal to enable social entrepreneurs to scale up and to replicate their projects and, ultimately, to increase their impact. For more information, please visit www.womenchangemakers.org.

The first two WomenChangeMakers’ Fellows were selected in Brazil in 2011.

We are now seeking nominations from India and would like you to recommend suitable candidates you think will meet our criteria. These are (all inclusive):

  • Women’s empowerment and progress: candidates head a innovative and confirmed project for the empowerment women, creating an enabling environment and/or lifting the barriers to women’s emancipation; they are active in one of the following areas: access to education and training; access to health care or improvement of health services for women; promotion of women’s social and political leadership; protection of women’s dignity and integrity and prevention of sexual and other forms of targeted violence; access to economic independence and empowerment.

  • Inflection point: candidates are at an inflection point, that is, their programs have been proven and tested as successful and efficient. They are at a level where they have a need to scale or replicate and grow. The selected fellows have been awarded recognition by cornerstone institutions in the field of social entrepreneurship, including Ashoka, the Schwab Foundation, the Skoll Foundation, Avina etc.

  • Systemic change: project ideas address the root causes of targeted problems, rather than its symptoms. They have a strong, systemic impact demonstrated by the number of women’s lives changed, in a durable way; as well as an impact on legislation at regional, national or international levels. At the same time, they should prove to have had an impact in the collective mind and social doings of the communities they act upon.

  • Entrepreneurship: WCM looks for individuals with a proven track record of entrepreneurship, a vision and the determination to reach it by any means.

  • Leadership: WCM identifies role models for their communities. Social entrepreneurs empower people in their networks to become changemakers.

  • Personal values are measured based on the deep and consistent commitment to equal rights and opportunities between men and women.

  • Ethical fibre and integrity are investigated through thorough due diligence and evaluation of entrepreneurs' track record.

  • Independence from government and secularity.

    Please send your nominations to the devashri.mukherjee [at] gmail.com by November 30th, 2011.

    Also, do pass the nomination letter around to appropriate networks and persons. I thank you very much in advance for your support and remain at your service for further information.

    With Best Regards,

    Devashri


    Devashri Mukherjee
    Consultant India
    WomenChangeMakers
    Mob. +91-9 8 1 9 7 0 7 9 6 0
    Skype: devashrimukherjee