Benefits

Fellowship awards provide round-trip international transportation to the field research site; a $3,000 research allowance, paid in a one-time, lump sum; and a $1,500 monthly stipend covering a maximum period of 12 months; and attendance at a “mid-year” Grassroots Development Conference where fellows discuss their progress with members of the IAF’s review committee. The meeting time will be announced.

Fellows are required to submit to the IAF, within six months of completing their grant period, a final report on their research of between 1,250 and 2,500 words.

General Eligibility

The applicant must be a Ph.D. student currently enrolled in a U.S. university and must have advanced candidacy before initiating IAF-funded field research.

• The competition is open to U.S. citizens and citizens of independent Latin American and Caribbean countries (except Cuba).
• The applicant´s research should not be funded by any other grant.
• IAF fellowships fund field research in independent Latin American and Caribbean countries (except Cuba). Proposals for field research in Puerto Rico or the Dutch, French and British territories are not eligible.
• Applicants must speak and read the language(s) appropriate to the research proposal.
• Each applicant must demonstrate a planned, substantive collaboration, during the field research period, with an affiliated development or applied research institution in the Latin American or Caribbean country.
  

Awards Criteria

Fellowships are available to currently registered students who have advanced candidacy for the Ph.D. in the social sciences, physical sciences, technical fields and the professions as related to grassroots development issues. However, applications for clinical research in the health field will not be considered.

Awards are based on both development and scholarly criteria. Proposals should offer a practical orientation to field-based information. Only in exceptional cases will the IAF support proposals reflecting a primary interest in macro questions of politics and economics as they relate to the environment of the poor. Because the Fellowship Program complements IAF´s support for grassroots development projects in Latin America and the Caribbean, preference is given to those applicants whose careers or research projects are related to topics of greatest interest to the IAF. Current priority topics include the following:

• Organizations promoting grassroots development among poor and disadvantaged people in Latin America and Caribbean;
• the financial sustainability and independence of development organizations;
• trends affecting historically excluded groups, such as African descendants, indigenous people, women, people with disabilities and young people;
• transnational development;
• the role of corporate social responsibility in grassroots development;
• the impact of globalization on grassroots development;
• the impact on the quality of life of the poor of grassroots development activities in such areas as sustainable agriculture and natural resource management; housing; primary health care; education; urban development; training and technical assistance; technology transfer; jobs creation; and marketing and small enterprise development.

For Application Procedures in English only visit www.iie.org/iaf.