Call for nominations: 2nd annual Paula Kantor award for excellence in field research (sub-Saharan Africa)

The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) is soliciting nominations for the second annual Paula Kantor Award for Excellence in Field Research.

The 2016 award will be given to a young female researcher who is a citizen of a sub-Saharan African country in order to recognize and honor outstanding achievement in the fields of gender and empowerment of women and girls. The 2016 Paula Kantor Award for Excellence in Field Research will be conferred to the winner at the launch of ICRW’s Africa Regional Office in December in Kampala, Uganda.

Nominations must be made by a third-party. If you know an outstanding researcher who deserves recognition for her work, please read closely the eligibility and nomination requirements and submit any nominations for the Paula Kantor Award for Excellence in Field Research by midnight EST, October 14, 2016.

Dr. Paula Kantor, Senior Scientist of Gender and Development at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and former Senior Rural Development Specialist at the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) died in the aftermath of a terrorist attack in Kabul, Afghanistan on May 13, 2015.

Dr. Kantor was a leading expert on gender issues and international development, with nearly 20 years of experience in executing policy research and programmatic work related to integrating gender into agriculture and rural development. Dr. Kantor’s work was largely driven by her desire and passion to improve lives in the global south, especially those of women and girls. She was a prolific researcher who participated in and worked with several initiatives to better the lives and improve livelihoods for women in conflict-prone and terrorist-affected areas. She worked across Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

The inaugural award was conferred to Dr. Soumya Gupta in January, 2016. Dr. Gupta’s work focused on the linkages between agriculture systems and women's empowerment and in turn, how these affect nutritional outcomes. 

The 2016 award will again be given as part of ICRW’s annual Champions for Change awards, which honors the work of thought-leaders and visionaries. Previous winners of the Champions for Change award include Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Co-Chair Melinda Gates, The Rt Hon William Hague MP, Leader of the House of Commons and Former Foreign Secretary of Great Britain, U.S. Ambassador at Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer, and other distinguished leaders.

The award will provide the recipient recognition and bring greater visibility to the researcher’s work and to the populations on which they focus. At the awards ceremony, the recipient of the award will have the opportunity to present in front of an esteemed global audience, comprising those in the development, business, NGO, and government sectors, and will receive opportunities to promote their research on www.icrw.org.

The selection jury for the Paula Kantor Award for Excellence in Field Research will be made up of distinguished professionals in the development, gender, academic, business, policy, civil society and research sectors.

Google Fellowship Program

Opportunity: Google Public Policy Fellowship

Duration: 3 months (Mid -September 2016 – Mid December 2016)

Location: Nairobi, Kenya

Host: The Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law (CIPIT) based at Strathmore University.

Apply by: 31 August 2016

The Google Fellowship program overview  

The Google Policy Fellowship program offers undergraduate, graduate, and law students interested in Internet and technology policy the opportunity to spend time contributing to the public dialogue on these issues, and exploring future academic and professional interests.

Fellows will have the opportunity to work at public interest organizations at the forefront of debates on broadband and access policy, content regulation, copyright and creativity, consumer privacy, open government, government surveillance, data security, data innovation, free expression and more.

Fellows will be assigned a lead mentor at their host organizations and will have the opportunity to work with several senior staff members over the course of their fellowship. Fellows will be expected to make substantive contributions to the work of their organization, including conducting policy research and analysis, drafting reports and white papers, attending government and industry meetings and conferences, and participating in other advocacy activities. Specifically for this fellowship, we are looking for an individual with knowledge on Kenya’s changing ICT policy landscape to work on a range of interrelated topics.

More about the 2016 Google Fellowship program is available here.

About CIPIT

The Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law (CIPIT) is an evidence-based research and training centre based at Strathmore University Law School, Nairobi, Kenya. Our Mission is to study, create, and share knowledge on the development of intellectual property and information technology, especially as they contribute to African Law and Human Rights.

Our team is multidisciplinary, drawn from law, political science, computer science and development while using diverse methodological approaches to inform debates on ICT applications and regulation.

More information about our work is available at www.cipit.org

To apply for the position, click here

Nominations open for Commonwealth Youth Worker Awards 2016

Nominations are now open for the Commonwealth Youth Worker Awards 2016, which will recognise youth workers who utilise sport and arts programmes to engage and empower young people across the Commonwealth.

The Commonwealth Youth Worker Awards celebrate the positive impact of youth workers on young people’s lives, their communities and their societies. Youth workers can be found in a broad range of civil society and voluntary organisations as well as government ministries and youth departments.

Past awardees have worked with at-risk youth, in grassroots organisations, civil society organisations, in schools and youth clubs and also in senior levels of government.

The awards scheme was launched in 2013 as part of Commonwealth Youth Work Week, an annual initiative by the Commonwealth Secretariat that highlights the contribution and achievements of youth work, youth workers, and youth organisations throughout the 53 Commonwealth member countries.

The theme for Commonwealth Youth Work Week 2016 is ‘Empowering young people through sport and arts’, acknowledging the intentional use by youth workers of sport, and creative and innovative techniques, to deliver effective youth empowerment programmes. As young people participate in these programmes, they build personal, social and intellectual capacities that enhance their contribution in the home, school, community, country and the wider world.

The nominations period will close on 31 August 2016, after which finalists will be shortlisted from each Commonwealth region - Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Americas, Europe, and the Pacific – with Youth Worker of the Year named for each region.

As part of an awards ceremony in London on 10 November 2016, the overall Commonwealth Youth Worker of the Year, drawn from the regional winners, will be named. The 2015 Commonwealth Youth Worker of the Year was Victor Ochen of Uganda, founder of the African Youth Initiative Network and a former Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.

If you know a youth worker who is doing great work using sport or the arts, then nominate them by completing the official form, available at commonwealth-youthworkers.awardsplatform.com/

Nominations will be assessed according to:

• Impact on young people’s lives - evidence of how the youth worker has made an impact on the lives of young people
• Impact on the wider community - the impact the youth worker’s intervention had on the community and families
• Quality of their interventions - evidence of the use of youth work principles, methods and sustainable approaches
• Innovation and learning – evidence of creativity in overcoming the challenges of delivery and in application of youth work theory