Scholarship opportunities for legal empowerment

A number network members from across the world have been accepted into colleges in the United States and Europe to further their studies in legal empowerment, rule of law and democratic governance. Some schools offer partial or full scholarships to cover tuition, but these grants don’t always cover the full cost of living. There are many donors who fund further education in the US and in other countries around the world and we want to create a list here to help colleagues in need of additional funding for their education on legal empowerment!

Have you received a grant to study in the US or Europe in the past? Are you a grant maker looking to share opportunities? Do you work in a university admissions office? Please share recurring grants, opportunities or tips you may have below!

@stellaobita @Adaochubili @michaelotto @akhila_kolisetty @amandapadilla @caitlinsislin @abigailmoy @peterchapman

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https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/grants-search-results/38/all/all/all/all

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This is great @staceycram, thanks for starting this post. I was recently asked about this by @mrblastuskahemela and have had others inquire previously, so compiling a list would be useful.

To start things off, I have started with some general sites offering resources on the topic, but note that we cannot vet or verify any of the information below.

NB: Apologies that this list is so US-centric - any European or Asian members have regional resources out there?

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Thank you @staceycram for stating this topic and @michaelotto for the elaboration. You know the greatest challenge for us community Paralegals is finding opportunities that gives us further capacity building in areas of human rights. A lot of times, I have searched to see if my colleagues or I could benefit from specific fellowships but most times, they are looking for people with legal backgrounds. One of the fact established on the platform is that legal practitioners cannot do this work alone because when compared with the population, the number is not sufficient. with all this said, how do we begin to change this narrative from this platform starting from the funding organizations here and those who organize training’s on capacity building and proper documentation in terms of rights and access to justice?

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I have come across some useful institutions that offer generous scholarships for human rights work, and most often however, these scholarships are very competitive.

Opensociety Foundations has a scholarship program, this information can be found on its official website, sometimes funding is remitted directly to different academic institutions to support those admitted students who will engage in human rights work,

Duke University Columbia University-has a human rights fellowship program that offers generous funding

Fordham University

New York University -Hauser Global Program and has different generous fellowships targeting Human rights practitioners.

Graduate Women International -and national chapters worldwide may provide some grants (www.graduatewomen.org

American Association of University Women ,supports women and provides various grants of different amounts for education-have international fellowships for women admitted to study in the USA(grants amount to USD18000) and other similar academic grants (www.aauw.org)

PEO international, also provides education grants of various amounts to women admitted to study in universities in the USA. (www.peointernational.org)

others are MacArthur foundation , (www.macfound.org)

Margaret McNamara education grants(www.mmeg.org)

Robert S.McNamara Fellowship program:

Fulbright scholarships by US government

World Bank also administers some scholarships

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I wish I had read this thread while in Rwanda during the launch of the African center for excellence as one of the participants had asked me about this. This is a brilliant idea. I think we should update such under the opportunities section. Thanks @staceycram for bringing this up. Thanks @michaelotto and @stellaobita for the links. This is very resourceful.

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I am just now realizing that we have two list topics to gather info about scholarship opportunities. The other one was start a few weeks after this one started, by @Nadia_Khan - see below. That one is more specifically about scholarships for post-graduate studies.

I still suggest we merge these lists into one wiki topic along the lines of the recurring fundraising and grant opportunities topic, to make scholarships easier for members to find. I can take a stab at this but if anyone has a burning passion to create a nicely edited list, perhaps with sections, feel free to volunteer. :raised_hand:

In the meantime, feel free to continue adding new links and ideas to these list topics. Also let us know here how it works out for you if you apply for scholarships.

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how do i get training on issues of human rights and justice

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Hello, check the resource centre on this platform(Network ) for materials. You could also start a new topic if there is any specific area you are interested in and learn from sharing and other peoples experience.

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Thank you soo much guys for all this information

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I really appreciate this. Thanks, Stacey!