[ALAC] Statement on changes to the Fellowship Program

Alan Greenberg alan.greenberg at mcgill.ca
Thu Jul 28 22:03:56 UTC 2016


As discussed during the ALAC call earlier this week, there is a 
Public Comment just about to close on changes to the ICANN Fellowship Program.

Some people in At-Large have been (rightfully) VERY vocal about 
perceived problems in the Fellowship program, specifically:

- people from some countries (such as Argentina) have recently become 
ineligible to participate in the Fellowship Program because the 
country has had its status upgraded in the World Bank list of 
development status (based on income);
- some people, particularly from some island territories were not eligible.

In both cases, the status of the overall economy might not have met 
the criteria, but that did not alter the perception that the people 
were not well represented in ICANN.

The proposed changes to the Fellowship Program address these problems and more.

Unfortunately, no one chose to volunteer to draft a brief statement 
of support for the changes.

At the ALAC Leadership Team meeting yesterday, it was decided that 
the Fellowship Program is sufficiently important to At-Large, the 
people we represent, and to ICANN in general that we MUST submit 
something. Accordingly, I drafted a set of notes which Ariel Liang 
ably transformed into a statement to be submitted.

The statement can be found at https://community.icann.org/x/LiOOAw.

The deadline for submission is tomorrow, Friday, 29 July at 23:59 
UTC. I will conduct a Consensus Call for formally ratify the 
statement next week, but if anyone has any concern with the 
statement, please bring that concern to my attention immediately.

Alan




More information about the ALAC mailing list