The IREX Community Solutions Program 2027 for Community youth leaders (Fully Funded to the United States)

Application Deadline:  24 November 2026

Applications at the moment are open for the 2027 IREX Community Solutions Program. The Community Solutions Program (CSP) is an expert management improvement program for skilled, results-oriented neighborhood leaders working to advance domestically pushed regional financial progress and neighborhood prosperity. CSP equips contributors with sensible management and technical abilities, skilled connections, and hands-on expertise to strengthen their capability to handle financial improvement challenges of their communities. Participants full an roughly three- to four-month U.S.-based change, together with a 12-week practicum with a U.S. group, and achieve sensible expertise they’ll apply to their work at home. Following the U.S. change, contributors return home to implement a community-based SCALE-Up Project that applies their CSP studying to advance native or regional financial improvement.

Program Details

Community leaders can be chosen to take part in the program that features:

• Three-month fellowship in the United States: Community Solutions contributors full a Three-month, hands-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’ll apply of their home communities. Practicum studying is complemented by regional subject visits that expose contributors to modern U.S. fashions of financial improvement 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, hands-on talent constructing to assist them adapt and broaden U.S. fashions of regional financial improvement. Participants develop management and administration instruments to flip regional financial progress concepts into motion. The Labs additionally discover how rising applied sciences, together with SI, can strengthen key industries, assist enterprise progress, and create new Opportunities for employees and communities.
• SCALE-Up Projects: Throughout their U.S. expertise, contributors establish promising U.S. regional financial improvement fashions, instruments, and partnership approaches and doc their studying. Following the practicum, contributors implement a nine-month SCALE-Up Project, adapting at the very least one U.S. mannequin, instrument, or partnership strategy to advance regional financial progress of their home communities.

Eligibility Requirements

• You are between the ages of 27 and 39 at 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 reveal measurable advantages to native communities.
• You reside and dealing in your nation at the time of application and should not residing or working exterior your nation, together with by an instructional, coaching, or analysis program.
  • You meet the country-of-residence necessities described beneath
• You have a excessive degree of proficiency in spoken and written English at the time of application
• Semi-finalists who don’t already possess a sound TOEFL rating of 520, or 213 on the computer-based check, or greater can be required to take an Institutional TOEFL or a comparable English-language proficiency evaluation permitted for CSP.
• You are in a position to start the CSP program in the United States in 2027 and take part in the roughly three- to four-month U.S.-based change. 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 should not 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 change program sponsored by the U.S. Government will need to have fulfilled their two-year home residency requirement.
• You are dedicated to returning to your home nation for a minimal of two years after finishing the program and implementing a community-based SCALE-Up Project.
• You meet any extra eligibility standards established printed in the remaining application supplies. 

Eligible Countries by Region

• Africa: Botswana, Cameroon, Ethiopia; Ghana; Guinea; Kenya; Liberia; Mozambique; Namibia; Rwanda; Uganda
• Middle East and North Africa: Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Tunisia

Benefits

The program covers the value of most bills related to:

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

For More Information:

Visit the Official Webpage of the IREX Community Solutions Program