IREX Community Solutions Program (CSP) 2026-2027 (Fully-funded) – YOA

Deadline: November 24, 2026

Applications are open for the IREX Community Solutions Program (CSP) 2026-2027. The Community Solutions Program (CSP) is knowledgeable management growth program for skilled, outcomes-oriented neighborhood leaders working to advance regionally pushed regional financial development and neighborhood prosperity.

CSP equips contributors with sensible management and technical abilities, skilled connections, and fingers-on expertise to strengthen their skill to handle financial growth challenges of their communities. Participants full an roughly three- to 4-month U.S.-based alternate, together with a 12-week practicum with a U.S. group, and achieve sensible expertise they will apply to their work at home. Following the U.S. alternate, contributors return home to implement a neighborhood-primarily based SCALE-Up Project that applies their CSP studying to advance native or regional financial growth.

Community leaders can be chosen to take part in this system that features:

• Three-month fellowship within the United States: Community Solutions contributors full a Three-month, fingers-on skilled practicum with a U.S. host group. Participants work alongside U.S. professionals, strengthen their technical and management abilities, and achieve sensible expertise they will apply of their home communities. Practicum studying is complemented by regional subject visits that expose contributors to progressive U.S. fashions of financial growth and collaboration amongst companies, Chambers of Commerce, workforce and academic establishments, native authorities, and neighborhood organizations.
• Innovation and Applied Skills Labs: Participants take part in Innovation and Applied Skills Labs, which give sensible, fingers-on talent constructing to assist them adapt and broaden U.S. fashions of regional financial growth. Participants develop management and administration instruments to show regional financial development concepts into motion. The Labs additionally discover how rising applied sciences, together with SI, can strengthen key industries, help enterprise development, and create new alternatives for employees and communities.
• SCALE-Up Projects: Throughout their U.S. expertise, contributors establish promising U.S. regional financial growth fashions, instruments, and partnership approaches and doc their studying. Following the practicum, contributors implement a 9-month SCALE-Up Project, adapting at the very least one U.S. mannequin, instrument, or partnership method to advance regional financial development of their home communities.

Benefits

The program covers the price of most bills related to:

• J-1 visa help
• Round-trip journey from contributors’ home metropolis to the U.S.
• Monthly allowance to cowl housing, meals, and different residing bills whereas within the U.S.
• Accident and illness well being protection
• Accessibility lodging, corresponding to ADA accessible rooms for in-particular person coaching, software program corresponding to JAWS, and neighborhood help and neighborhood coaching

Eligibility

• You are between the ages of 27 and 39 on the time of application.
• You are a citizen of a rustic listed on the official application web site.
• You have at the very least 5 years of expertise engaged on neighborhood points and may display measurable advantages to native communities.
• You reside and dealing in your nation on the time of application and aren’t residing or working outdoors your nation, together with by way of an instructional, coaching, or analysis program.
  • You meet the nation-of-residence necessities described beneath
• You have a excessive degree of proficiency in spoken and written English on the time of application
• Semi-finalists who don’t already possess a legitimate TOEFL rating of 520, or 213 on the pc-primarily based check, or greater can be required to take an Institutional TOEFL or a comparable English-language proficiency evaluation accredited for CSP.
• You are in a position to start the CSP program within the United States in 2027 and take part within the roughly three- to 4-month U.S.-based alternate. Current planning dates are Orientation August 2–5, practicum August 9–October 29, and End-of-Program Workshop November 1–4, 2027, topic to affirmation.
• You aren’t a citizen or everlasting resident of the U.S. and haven’t utilized for U.S. everlasting residency inside the previous three years.
• You are eligible to obtain a U.S. J-1 visa
• Applicants who’ve participated in an alternate program sponsored by the U.S. Government will need to have fulfilled their two-12 months home residency requirement.
• You are dedicated to returning to your home nation for no less than two years after finishing this system and implementing a neighborhood-primarily based SCALE-Up Project.
• You meet any further eligibility standards established revealed within the closing application supplies. 

Eligible Countries by Region

• Africa: Botswana, Cameroon, Ethiopia; Ghana; Guinea; Kenya; Liberia; Mozambique; Namibia; Rwanda; Uganda
• East Asia and the Pacific: Cambodia, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Solomon Islands,  Thailand, Tonga, Vanuatu, Vietnam 
• Europe: Albania, Belarus, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Moldova, North Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine 
• Middle East and North Africa: Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Tunisia
• South and Central Asia: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan
• Western Hemisphere: Bolivia, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad & Tobago, and Venezuela

Application

Click here to apply

For extra info, go to Community Solutions Program.