At-Large Workspace: ICANN Fellowship Program Community Consultation

This program is very important for all the members of the ICANN ecosystem. In particular for us, it allows contact with the participating end users, and the corresponding direct fedback.
It is a program that must be maintained, and if there is a need for reduction due to budgetary problems, I believe that the reduction should be sought in other items.
For example, the selection of places for iCANN meetings that are not as expensive as Kobe. And if there is no other form of reduction, do it gradually in lower annual percentages.

ICANN receives many benefits from this program, as well as from the CROP program. It is not an expense but an investment. The impact it will have on dissemination to all sectors that are not in contact with ICANN should be measured

Particularly in Argentina, there has been a lot of emphasis on the repetition of people from multi-stakeholder groups that have the possibility of financing their own trips (ISPs or ISP cameras). But it has not proceeded in the same way with civil society or academia, which have no chance to participate f2f in ICANN. It is a matter of sector diversity and they do not have financial support.

Please contribute your comments here. We have been asked for an ALAC position and not individual statements, so it is important that we have input.

In addition to what has been done well, please include anything you think must change. As an example, I suspect (but do not really know) that the addition of Fellowship Mentors/Coaches may not have been as effective as expected, or at least may not generate as much payback as bringing in new Fellows with those same travel funds.

Fellowships have traditionally targeted people from underserved regions. Disappointingly, we don't get many of these Fellows engaging directly in At-Large following on from their Fellowships. Sometimes, I know that this is because they don't have access to internet or other communication resources, or broadband is not adequate for our communication systems, etc. They may attend APRALO meetings, but find it difficult to participate in working groups. 

Before Fellows attend their first ICANN meeting, they should  have to complete an ICANN Learn course on "What is ICANN , how is it made up and what is the purposed of each of its various sections ?"  It would therefore save time for the Felowship to concentrate on who the important people are in the different sections of the ICANN people and how they all contribute to the work of ICANN - particularly in regards to policy development. 

Engaging in the online course will also identify those who will have difficulty with communicating with ICANN as followup, so that if they cannot engage directly, then they must plan a program of outreach and engagement within their local community to demonstrate how they can contribute to the work of ICANN at a local level, until capacity builds within their countries and they themselves can get more engaged.   

Because there is a lack of direct engagement from a majority of our Fellows from underserved regions, maybe in order to increase the potential of interested participants in the policy development area, we need to open Fellowships up to a proportion of semi-developed country participants who have a specific interest area around domain name governance or in some of our more technical issues. 

Even within our ALAC we lack expertise within some areas which are left to a select few, who have to mix with experts from other constituencies, rather than from within our own At-Large community.  Therefore we should try to identify Fellows who could become more active in the ALAC and provide them with mentors who can guide and hopefully engage them through the ALAC policies and policy development processes and working groups.