2001 Annual Report - Ford Foundation

President’s Message
In 2001 the Ford Foundation and the Institute for International Education
(I.I.E.) launched the largest single initiative in the foundation’s history—
the Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program (I.F.P.). This
10-year, $330 million program has two parts. Through the International
Fellowships Fund (I.F.F.), a new entity established by Ford and I.I.E., the
program will provide approximately 3,500 graduate fellowships for
disadvantaged individuals with academic promise and proven leadership
capacity, for study anywhere in the world for up to three years.
Ford will also make complementary grants to strengthen overseas
undergraduate institutions’ability to recruit and prepare traditionally
excluded groups for opportunities of this sort.
The I.F.P. responds to the world’s need for new generations of outstanding
leaders with direct knowledge of some of their societies’worst
problems and inequities, and a sense of moral urgency about them.
Such leaders will need more than talent,good ideas and determination,
crucial as these qualities are. Many will also need the analytic skills,
social networks and know-how that can come from advanced professional
or interdisciplinary education, and from the diversity of thought
and experience now found on many of the world’s university campuses.
Because the I.F.P. uses a variety of innovative recruitment and selection
procedures to reach its target groups, and because fellowships can
be such a crucial strategy for personal and national development,
I want to describe what the I.F.P.’s first year has involved.
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The program seeks academically talented men and women who would
not normally have the opportunity for graduate study, whether because
of geographic isolation, family poverty or discrimination based on
gender, ethnicity, physical disability or other factors. The I.F.P.’s dual
focus on talent and social exclusion, combined with the freedom to
study anywhere in the world, was noted by experts in each country
as nearly unique and challenging to implement. A decentralized
operation and partnerships with experienced regional, national and
international organizations have been key to addressing the challenges.
In each location, three organizations combined forces to make the
program work as intended: the I.F.F., its local partner organization,
and a local Ford Foundation office (see table on page 4).