Applications Being Accepted for Tokyo Foundation–Acumen Fund Global Fellows Program

(Call for applications closed on November 20)

As part of its leadership development activities, the Tokyo Foundation has been partnering with the Acumen Fund—a non-profit global venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to address the problem of global poverty—to provide fellowships for a 12-month Acumen Fund Global Fellows Program (AFGFP) and to solicit applications in Japan.

Starting with a two-month intensive leadership training program in New York, fellows are dispatched to a social business in a developing country, where they support the growth of that company by working with local colleagues. Few other global training programs are of such duration and are focused on actual work in the field.

One fellow from Japan has been selected each year—three in all—since fiscal 2009. Following their participation in the program, the fellows have gone on to contribute actively to the world as social entrepreneurs.

Applications are now being solicited for the program to begin in September 2012. A briefing session, including a presentation by Chikako Fujita, who was the second fellow from Japan during 2010–11, is being held on Sunday, October 16, at the Tokyo Foundation.

A live stream of the session can be viewed at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/tokyofoundation (Japanese only). Application procedures are available at http://www.tkfd.or.jp/fellowship/program/news.php?id=118 (Japanese only). View reports of Fujita’s experience in New York and at Dial 1298 (Ziqitza Healthcare Limited) in India (in English) at http://access2plonecms.tokyofoundation.org/en/articles/2011/ambulances-for-india0.

Information on the launch of the Tokyo Foundation’s partnership with Acumen can be viewed at http://access2plonecms.tokyofoundation.org/en/articles/2008/the-tokyo-foundation-initiates-partnership-with-acumen-fund.