The Community Innovator Fellowship (CIF) is designed to nurture young and aspiring community innovators who are building indegineous solutions for local challenges. CIF aims to support their entrepreneurial journey by providing access to infrastructure, knowledge (SDGs, business and life skills), network and market. If you are a young innovator/entrepreneur working to resolve an existing challenge in your region through an enterprise, this fellowship is for you.
Please contact your nearby ACIC and check if they are accepting applications for the fellowship. To know about the operational ACICs in the country, please click here.
The fellowship is designed to operate in a hybrid mode (both online and offline). Most of the learning material will be hosted on the digital learning platform and interaction with the AIM team, workshops and webinars will happen online. The ACIC hours (12 weeks) are to be spent physically at the ACIC and can be utilised for interacting with the ACIC staff, other fellows from the cohort or startups, working in the ACIC labs, attending workshops and other events. Although a fellow will be free to spend as much time in the ACIC as the fellow wants, it will be mandatory for a fellow to spend a minimum of 12 weeks in ACIC.
Fellows could also be enrolled from outside the ACIC’s geographical region with a mandate of completing certain community hours and ACIC hours.
The fellowship is a full time engagement and hence graduation is a mandatory criteria to apply for the fellowship. However, on the discretion of the ACIC, exceptions can be made based on the merit of your idea and other relevant parameters.
Intermediate Level for English proficiency will be judged on the written and reading and comprehension ability. If a person is able to do the following things, s/he would be considered at the intermediate level:
As each of the fellows' ideas, needs and progress status might differ, the potential outcomes mentioned for each of the phases will not hamper accessing knowledge of the subsequent phases. The fellow is free to access and complete the learning material for the next phases`post ensuring completion of milestones for the current phase. The CIF board committee will evaluate the fellow bi-anually on their learning and achievement of the phase milestone.
The process of selection is dependent on the host ACIC and would entail filling a form with specific questions about your idea, views and an interview round. Please note that there can be more rounds of selection based on the discretion of ACIC.
