Conservation International invites interested women across NRT conservancies to apply for the 2025-2026 Emerging Indigenous Women Leaders Fellowship. One fellow will be selected.
Purpose: To support emerging women leaders to engage in activities and research that contribute to supporting equitable and inclusive governance within community conservancies and women’s leadership in rangeland management.
Alignment with other efforts: This fellowship is aligned with the NRT gender priority-Women’s Leadership Summit and seeks to build on some of the outcomes from Annual Leadership Summits and contribute to the 2026 Summit. The previous Summit highlighted several key priorities:
• Strengthening leadership and management capacity of women.
• Mentorship and coaching encourage and support emerging leaders.
• Fair representation of women in conservancies who are strong and influential leaders.
• Increase women participation in conservation and community development, supporting women-led projects.
• Education and support girls to remain at school.
• Carbon credit and climate change literacy.
• Human rights and social justice in conservation.
The fellowship at a glance:
• Supports 1 emerging woman leader within an NRT and conservancies.
• Part-time commitment from Mar 2026 – Feb 2027
• USD 15,000 (approximately 1.9 million Kenya Shillings) for activities and stipend
• Fellowship focus and activities are identified and driven by the fellow supported by gender office and community conservancy.
Fellowship application components:
• Completed application form
• Clearly defined workplan for the fellowship, which includes:
o Specific and measurable activities and deliverables
o Work plans can include activities focused on professional development (for example training courses)
o One activity should be the submission of a final report highlighting outcomes from the fellowship (around January 2027)
o Another activity should be for the fellow to present findings and outcomes from their fellowship (audience and methods to be determined)
• Associated budget, clearly detailing how the funding will be spent across each activity
• Nomination letter from the fellow’s home conservancy or affiliated organization explaining why she is a good candidate for this fellowship
Eligibility:
• The fellow must be a member of an NRT affiliated Conservancy
• Fellow must speak and write English; all communication will be done in English
• Fellow must have phone and email connectivity
• The fellow must have a bank account or be able to open a bank account
To apply: Please email the application components (application form, workplan and budget, nomination letter) to ProcurementkenyaKE@conservation.org on or before Jan 30th, 2026.
Expected timeline of fellowship:
December 2025 Fellowship announced
Jan 30th, 2026 Applications due via email to ProcurementkenyaKE@conservation.org
Feb 10th - 14th, 2026 Interviews with top candidates and final selection
Feb 17th, 2026 All applicants are notified of selection result
Feb 18th - 28th, 2026 Contract paperwork/workplan development
March 3rd, 2026 Fellowship officially begins
Feb 28th, 2027 Fellowship closes, final report due; final meeting/presentations
Deadline: 30 Jan 2026
