Key details
- Host: Acumen Academy
- Open to: West Africans
- Target: Entrepreneurs
- Deadline: 20th July, 2021
Applications for the 2021 Acumen West Africa Fellows Program for emerging Leaders in are currently ongoing.
About the Acumen West Africa Fellows Program
The Acumen West Africa Fellows program chooses 20 Fellows each year from a variety of sectors, nationalities, and backgrounds who are working to address poverty and injustice, and provides them with the techniques and community they need to develop and sustain their impact.
The Fellowship starts with a fully funded year-long leadership program, during which Fellows stay in their current position while participating in a series of immersive lectures, workshops, and group practice.
This is where practical skills collide with moral imagination, and the program is meant to provide Fellows the tools, mindset, and community they need to combat poverty and injustice in their communities.
Fellows join Acumen’s global community of social innovators after the first year, and are committed to lifelong learning, collaboration, and accompaniment as they work to build a world founded on dignity.
Eligibility Criteria
The Acumen West Africa Fellows program is for people who are currently leading or are a key part of creating a poverty-eradication organization or initiative and are actively altering the structures in which they work. They devote their complete attention to this project and often follow one of the following paths:
- Social entrepreneurs: who have launched or lead their own social change initiatives (non-profit or for-profit).
- Social intrapreneurs: who are running a social change initiative within an existing organization (private or public sector).
- Organizational builders: who are an integral part of building a social change organization, but do not play a founding role
Benefit
In the Acumen West Africa Fellows program fellows will:
- Learn to catalyse and embrace the gradual and meaningful process of creating change at the personal, organisational, and societal levels
- Cultivate the ability to lead effectively when opposing but interdependent values are in tension
- Understand how to lead diverse stakeholders through recurring and complex challenges
- Develop the capacity to tell meaningful stories that speak across lines of difference and move others to action
- Examine your identities, values, and choices that have shaped your journey till now and cultivate a deeper understanding of yourself and your work in a broader context
- Explore the meaning of a just society and the moral and historical foundation of social change through text-based dialogue
- Navigate systemic problems and design more effective interventions using moral imagination
- Question your assumptions and beliefs about leading effective change
- Be supported and accompanied by a cohort of like-minded peers persevering in the process of driving social change
NOTE: Our curriculum draws on powerful leadership frameworks, tools, and approaches, including Adaptive Leadership, Authentic Voice, Good Society Readings, Immunity to Change, and Polarities Management.
Also read: Yunus And Youth Global Fellowship for Social Entrepreneurs 2021
Application Procedure
Our application process consists of these four steps.
- Step 1: Apply online — Applications open 9 June and close 20 July
- Step 2: Receive your online assignments in August
- Step 3: Attend the Selection Conference in November
- Step 4: Our Fellows are selected early December
For more information visit the official website of Acumen West Africa Fellows Program 2021