2023 Next Generation India Fellowship (Fully-funded): Apply Now!

Introduction to the Next Generation India Fellowship

The Council on Energy Environment and Water CEEW and the United Nations Foundation are excited to introduce the Next Generation India Fellowship. This unique two-year fellowship is specifically designed to empower India’s most promising young leaders under the age of 30 to shape the future of their nation and the world, working closely with the Global Next Generation Fellows. It aims to unlock original, maverick and substantive ideas from the youth of India for a sustainable future. They are currently recruiting for multiple roles.

This is a full-time role for the two-year fellowship. The Next Generation India Lead Fellow will serve a dual role with a multilateral focus and be representative of the Next Generation Fellows. They will collaborate with a global network of young changemakers, as well as partners in the international system and across regional bodies, to connect this fellowship with the Summit of the Future and other key opportunities and processes. This is an exciting opportunity to lead a transformative fellowship and empower young Indians to drive positive change in line with the Sustainable Development Goals.

They are also accepting applications for thematic fellows for the following themes:

Public Health

New Technologies
Gender Equality
Future of the Workforce

Thematic fellows will be required to dedicate one day per week towards the fellowship over the course of the next two years. Please note that this is not a full-time role.

About the New Generation India Fellowship Program

Our Future Agenda is a new UN Foundation program that helps young people shape the global policy agenda to tackle the world’s most urgent challenges. It aims to deliver impact for the next generation – young people under 30 who make up half the world’s population; and future generations – the 10.9 billion people yet to be born this century. It builds on the request by the UN Secretary-General to host a group of young leaders as Next Generation Fellows to contribute to and support Our Common Agenda, his vision for the future of international cooperation.

Their proposals were launched in a standalone report entitled Our Future Agenda, which identifies six thematic priorities raised by young people as priorities for global action: transforming education; jobs and economic opportunities; climate and sustainability; and peace and justice. The program helps young thinkers, leaders, and activists deliver results. We aim to:

Support a new cohort of Next Generation Fellows under 30 to drive Our Future Agenda priorities in partnership with the United Nations and the broader international system.
Engage partners through the Unlock the Future coalition to drive action, commitments, and financing for young people, leveraging its reach of over 875 million worldwide.
Activate the generation of doers, providing young people with an open, intergenerational platform to design the future.

Bolster efforts to rejuvenate global institutions and equip them to think, plan, and act for the future across the UN and the broader international system.

The Next Generation India Fellows is an opportunity for young Indian thinkers and leaders to gain first-hand experience in understanding and solving the world’s most pressing challenges from the lens of the Global South. In the year that India will be confirmed as the world’s most populous country and leads the G20, this fellowship will provide a global platform for its young doers, leaders, and thinkers, to explore and champion an agenda for next and future generations.

The UN Foundation (UNF) and the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) will work in partnership to co-deliver the fellowship, building links between these Fellows and changemakers in other young countries, and providing a platform for the Fellows during India’s G20 presidency, the Sustainable Development Goals Summit in 2023, and the Summit of the Future in 2024.

The fellowship supports the One Future theme of India’s G20 and its commitment to 21st-century multilateralism and the acceleration of the implementation of the United Nations Agenda 2030 – and will build towards the first United Nations Summit of the Future in 2024. As part of the two-year fellowship, the fellows will foster honest conversations about the One Future theme of the G20 presidency, and the implementation of the SDGs, and build consensus around a ‘future agenda’ for young Indians.

The fellows will also explore options for investing in their generation and for protecting the needs and rights of India’s future generation. The fellowship will provide an opportunity to strengthen youth-led and youth-focused networks, and platforms, and contribute towards institution building.

In line with our commitment to building links between immediate, near-term, and long-term challenges, this work will:

Develop solutions for the most urgent challenges facing young Indians, in areas such as education, health, inclusion for marginalized young people, sustainable growth, and disaster risk reduction.
Tackle risks that will shape the lives of the next and future generations across the course of this century, including climate change, biodiversity loss, food systems, digital transformations, emerging security threats, and catastrophic and existential threats.
Make proposals for how to build 21st-century international institutions that can think, plan, and act for the future.

The Next Generation India Fellows will work with UNF and CEEW to design, implement, and lead a process that will develop proposals to influence the global policy agenda. Each Fellow will be selected for key priorities emerging from the G20, namely climate finance, energy security, food security, inclusive growth, women-led development, digital transformation, global health, and 21st-century multilateralism.

Working across these areas, Fellows will connect with other youth-led networks and young leaders and will take feedback from members of these various organizations and academic experts in the form of Action Groups. They will also explore how the UN and the broader international system can create space for young people to participate and shape decisions that affect their futures and how it can represent the interests of future generations.

Ready to apply? Click HERE before 31 October 2023 to begin your application.