Commonwealth Gender and Sexuality Fellowships are for mid-career professionals from low and middle income Commonwealth countries to spend a period of time at a UK host organisation working in their sector for a programme of professional development.

Purpose: To provide professionals with the opportunity to enhance knowledge and skills in their given sector, and to have catalytic effects on their workplaces.

Intended beneficiaries: Mid-career professionals (with five years’ relevant work experience) working in development-related organisations in low and middle income Commonwealth countries.

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Commonwealth Financial assistance

Each Fellowship provides:

• Approved return airfare from the Fellow’s home country to the UK
• Reimbursement of the standard visa application fee
• Stipend (living allowance) payable monthly (or pro rata) for the duration of the award at the rate of £1,944 per month, or £2,397 per month for those at organisations in the London metropolitan area (rates quoted at 2021/22 levels)
• If a Fellow declares a disability, a full assessment of needs and eligibility for additional financial support will be offered by the CSC. See the CSC disability support statement for more information
• Arrival allowance of up to £1,061.10 (rates quoted at 2021/22 levels), including an element for warm clothing
• For the Gender and Sexuality programme a £1,000 travel allowance per fellow to facilitate attendance at events (administered by host organisations)
• A maximum of £3,000 per fellow can be agreed by host organisations for short courses/conferences as well as travel to visit other UK organisations where this forms an integral part of the programme. Host organisations should bear in mind the restrictions set out in our guidance on claimable costs.

Commonwealth Host organisation programmes

University of Kent

The Kent fellowship will provide a three-month programme of interdisciplinary investigation and professional development for three mid-career professionals working in equality, inclusivity, and diversity policy, with a particular focus on gender and sexuality.

During the programme, each Fellow will work with a University of Kent mentor and will be able to interact and explore different areas of the university’s response and policy associated with gender and sexuality, with the opportunity to give particular focus to their respective areas of interest and lived experience. Fellowship activities will be structured span issues which explore the realisation of EDI (Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion) policy at Kent through the specific lens of gender and sexuality. The activities will involve identifying opportunities for local enhancement of policy implementation for community support at Kent. The Fellowship will also allow participants to consider good practice in gender and sexuality policy development and enactment which can be transferred to their own home working contexts.

www.kent.ac.uk/equality-diversity-inclusivity/commonwealth-scholarships-and-fellowships

Lifegate Outreach Centre

The Lifegate Outreach fellowship programme will be a continuous professional development programme for work. This will expose participating Fellows to various activities that enable best practices and opportunities to transfer knowledge, skills, and experience.

The programme will ensure Fellows’ project portfolios achieve the objective of promoting gender and sexuality ideation and practices. The approach for the transfer of knowledge, skills, and experience will encompass desk-based research, tailored training, practical hands-on training/workshop (where applicable), conference participation, presentation of work progress, mentoring, knowledge exchange project plan development and secondment (i.e., practitioner-to-practitioner shadowing at relevant organisations).

Through this programme, Fellows are expected to develop the capacity to promote gender and sexuality initiatives in their various spheres of influence through engagement with rural and urban communities, households, small/medium enterprises, regional/environmental-consciousness, non-governmental organisations, and local and national policymakers upon return to their home countries.

www.lifegatecentre.org

Commonwealth Fellow eligibility

To be eligible for these Fellowships, prospective Fellows must:

• Be a citizen of, or have been granted refugee status by, an eligible Commonwealth country, or be a British Protected Person
• Be permanently resident in an eligible Commonwealth country
• Have at least five years’ full-time, or equivalent part-time, relevant work experience, in a profession related to the subject of the fellowship programme, by the proposed start of the fellowship – voluntary work experience will not be counted towards this minimum
• Be in employment at the time of application at an organisation that they will return to upon completion of the fellowship
• Provide at least two references, one of which must be from their current employer. Any applications for which references are not received by the reference closing date will be considered ineligible.
• Not have undertaken a Commonwealth Professional Fellowship within the last five years (at the time of taking up the award)
• Not be seeking to undertake an academic programme of research or study. Academics are eligible to apply for the scheme, but only to undertake programmes of academic management, not research or courses relevant to their research subject
•  Be available to undertake their fellowship within the full duration of the prescribed dates

Commonwealth Eligible countries

Bangladesh
Belize
Botswana
Cameroon
Dominica
Eswatini
Fiji
Gabon
The Gambia
Ghana
Grenada
Guyana
India
Jamaica
Kenya
Kiribati
Lesotho
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Mauritius
Montserrat
Mozambique
Namibia
Nauru
Nigeria
Pakistan
Papua New Guinea
Rwanda
St Helena
St Lucia
St Vincent and The Grenadines
Samoa
Sierra Leone
Solomon Islands
South Africa
Sri Lanka
Tanzania
Togo
Tonga
Tuvalu
Uganda
Vanuatu
Zambia

How to apply

Gender and Sexuality Fellowships in 2024

Fellowship applications are now open and will close at 16:00 BST on Wednesday 16 August 2023.

You can apply by completing our online application form. Please refer to the ‘Completing application form’ tab to access the application form.

In 2024/25, the CSC is running a Fellowship programme aimed at professionals whose work supports the rights, freedoms, dignity and inclusion of communities who are discriminated again because of gender identity or sexuality.

All Fellowships in this round will be tenable for three months from Wednesday 21 February 2024. 

Completing Fellow application form

To submit an application for the Gender and Sexuality Fellowships programme you must complete the online application form. 

In the application form, prospective Fellows will be asked to:

• List all undergraduate and postgraduate university qualifications obtained (where applicable)
• List up to 10 publications and prizes (if applicable)
• Provide details of your employment history and explain how each job is relevant to the programme you wish to undertake in the UK (up to 100 words per employment)
• Provide a statement on the relevance of your previous work experience to the proposed fellowship (up to 300 words)
• List names and positions of up to three referees who are qualified to comment on both your capacity to benefit from your proposed fellowship in the UK and your ability to deliver development impact afterwards. One of your referees must be your current employer

Provide a development impact statement in 4 parts.

• Part 1: (up to 200 words) Explain how participation on your selected fellowship relates to:
  • UN principle to leave no one behind as it related to supporting the rights, freedoms, dignity and inclusion of communities who are discriminated against because of their gender identity or sexuality.
  • development issues at the global, national and local level
  • development issues connected to the theme of human rights of people and communities who are discriminated against, or criminalised because of their gender identity or sexuality and the wider sector
• Part 2 (up to 100 words) Explain how you intend to apply your new skills once your Fellowship ends.

• Part 3 (up to 250 words) Outline what you expect will change in development terms following your fellowship including:
  • the outcomes that you aim to achieve
  • the timeframe for their implementation
  • who the beneficiaries will be
• Part 4: (up to 100 words) Write about how the impact of your work could be best measured.
• Confirm what your award objectives are and how each of them will be met by the fellowship programme
• Confirm what your objectives are for the next two years and how each of them will be met by the fellowship programme
• Confirm what your objectives are in the longer term and how each of them will be met by the fellowship programme
• Provide a personal statement to summarise the ways in which your personal background has encouraged you to want to make an impact in your home country. You should indicate areas in which you have already contributed, such as having overcome any personal or community barriers to your chosen career (up to 500 words)
• Summarise the ways in which you have engaged in voluntary activities and the opportunities you have had to demonstrate leadership (up to 500 words)
• Provide a scan of your passport or national identity card

Enquiries

If you have any queries about Commonwealth Gender and Sexuality Fellowships, please email [email protected]

General enquiries about applying for Commonwealth Scholarships or Fellowships sent to this email address will not be answered; please use the contact us form instead.

To see a list of our previous Fellowship hosts please visit our Professional Fellowship Host Organisation page and to learn more about previous Time Limited programmes please visit our TLP page.

Visit the official webpage