Mandela Washington Fellowship Reciprocal Exchange Component 2026 (Funding available) – YOA

Deadline: September 19, 2025

Applications are open for the Mandela Washington Fellowship Reciprocal Exchange Component 2026. The Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders—the flagship trade program of the U.S. Government’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI)—was created to spend money on the subsequent era of African leaders.  Established in 2014, the Fellowship has supported Alumni from throughout Sub-Saharan Africa to develop their management abilities and foster connections and collaboration with U.S. professionals. The Mandela Washington Fellowship is a program of the U.S. Department of State with funding supplied by the U.S. Government and administered by IREX.

The Fellowship’s Reciprocal Exchange part supplies U.S. professionals with the OPPORTUNITY to construct upon strategic partnerships {and professional} connections developed through the Mandela Washington Fellowship. U.S. professionals are supplied funds to implement in-particular person or hybrid tasks in Sub-Saharan African international locations to proceed collaborative work with Fellowship Alumni on the continent. U.S. professionals could embrace Americans engaged with the Fellowship by way of networking, the Summit, Professional Development Experiences, or different actions.

Benefits

• Maximum Hybrid grant Award: $3,000 per venture
• Maximum In-Person Grant Award: $5,000 per chosen Participant (as much as 4 U.S. Participants)

Eligibility

• U.S. professionals taking part within the Reciprocal Exchange have to be U.S. residents at the moment residing within the United States.
• U.S. professionals might not be staff or instant members of the family of staff of the U.S. Government (together with a U.S. Embassy or different U.S. Government entity).
• Any one particular person can full not more than two in-particular person Reciprocal Exchange tasks.
• Fellowship Alumni have to be thought-about Alumni of the Fellowship in good standing by the U.S. Department of State. They might not be staff or instant members of the family of staff of the U.S. Government.
• Fellowship Alumni should reside within the proposed venture nation and be current for the total length of the venture’s implementation.

Selection Criteria

Eligible purposes shall be reviewed utilizing the next choice standards: 

• Demonstrates affect on the Fellowship Alumni Collaborator’s home group, group, and/or nation; 
• Demonstrates affect and concrete profit to U.S. corporations, communities, or organizations; 
• Demonstrates joint engagement between the Fellowship Alumni Collaborator and U.S. skilled in venture design and implementation (i.e., it needs to be clear to application reviewers that every applicant contributed equally to the general application); 
• Proposes a transparent and real looking venture implementation plan; 
• Provides measurable objectives and particular venture actions throughout implementation; and 
• Demonstrates continued affect of the venture after implementation. 

Application

Reciprocal Exchange purposes should embrace the next attachments. Applications lacking any attachment shall be thought-about incomplete and due to this fact ineligible.

• Completed Application Form
  • Both the U.S. skilled and the Fellowship Alumni should work collectively to finish an application type.
  • Both the U.S. skilled and the Fellowship Alumni should work collectively to finish an application type.
  • All responses have to be in English.
  • Include your full, authorized identify as it’s spelled in your worldwide passport.  
  • Provide full contact data, together with postal index codes for all addresses, and nation and space codes for phone numbers. 
  • Answers to essay questions shouldn’t exceed 300 phrases (roughly 2,000 characters) per query. Do not copy and paste essay responses between the U.S. skilled and the Fellowship Alumni Collaborator sections of the application. 
  • The use of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) instruments is strongly discouraged, as content material generated utilizing these instruments is usually obscure and duplicative and leads to poor purposes.  Applicants ought to make sure the core content material and expressions are their very own and that the content material represents their very own distinctive experiences and plans.  
• Completed Work Plan
  • Eligible work plans should use the supplied template and adjust to the necessities outlined within the template’s Guidelines tab. Template available here.
• Completed Budget Form: All prices needs to be in U.S. {dollars}. 
  • Eligible budgets should use the supplied template and adjust to the necessities outlined within the template’s Guidelines tab. 
  • Budgets ought to mirror complete estimated prices of venture implementation, together with bills that shall be supplied in-variety and/or by way of price-share. Template available here. 
• Professional Resumes: Resumes for all candidates ought to display that the candidates are properly-certified to implement the proposed venture.  They have to be submitted in English and not than two pages.

Click here to apply

For extra data, go to Reciprocal Exchange Component.