Resilience Fellowship

In October 2019, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime announced the launch of the Resilience Fellowship, a new initiative of the Resilience Fund to build a platform for cross-sectoral, global, and interdisciplinary collaboration to counter the effects of organized crime.

We are now delighted to present our Fellows, after the successful completion of the selection process:

2020 Fellows

Rubaya, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Benoit Kikwaya

State of Bolivar, Venezuela

Clavel Rangel

Bucharest, Romania

Ioana Bauer

Ituango, Colombia

Isabel Zuleta

Meru, Kenya

Judie Kaberia

Manila, Philippines

Mae Paner

Culiacan, Mexico

Maria Isabel Cruz

Manila, Philippines

Rafael Lerma

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Sok Phay Sean

Focusing on the 2020 Resilience Fellowship’s theme: “Disappearances Related to Organized Crime”, each of the 10 Fellows will be supported in their work with communities, be encouraged to pursue collaborative projects, and provided with mentorship, training opportunities and different international platforms for the dissemination of their work.

2021 Reslience Fellowship's theme

Extortion and organized crime

view all 2021 fellows

Rubaya, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Benoit Kikwaya

Benoit Kikwaya is a graduate in Rural Development from the Institut Supérieur de Développement Rural des Grands-Lacs. Since 2005, he has been the Secretary of the Children's Parliament of the East DRC where he also assumed the role of Chairman of the Child Protection Commission. From 2010 to 2012, he was a community organizer at the Human Rights Observatory. In his hometown Goma, his has also worked constantly for the rights and wellbeing of children and youth.

From 2014 to the present day, he has worked supervising and following up activities in the Rubaya mining area for the fight against modern slavery. In 2015, he became an expert in the Coalition of Civil Society Organizations of the Great Lakes, monitoring and reporting on the traceability of mineral supply chains according to ICGLR due diligence standards. Benoit is currently the Director of the Goma Foyer Culturel and Head of the Artistic Committee of the Amani Festival.

State of Bolivar, Venezuela

Clavel Rangel

Clavel Rangel is a Venezuelan journalist and university professor based in southern Venezuela, in the State of Bolivar. As a journalist, she has covered trade union issues, and more recently, issues related to human rights violations in the context of the complex humanitarian crisis that the country is going through. Clavel has worked with several news outlets and supported independent journalist groups.

Through her work, she has collaborated with investigations and coverage related to corruption and violence and supported initiatives to increase citizens’ access to reliable information. Her latest projects focus on migration, human rights, and disappearances in the State of Bolivar, highlighting the stories of those affected through the project Fosas del Silencio.

Bucharest, Romania

Ioana Bauer

Ioana Bauer is the director of eLiberare, an NGO working on preventing and combatting human trafficking and sexual exploitation in Romania. She has been active in the area of protecting human rights and human dignity since 2005. Besides leading and shaping prevention activities, developing materials on the issue and conducting capacity building activities, Ioana has also worked directly with survivors of human trafficking pushing for better assistance and identification of victims.

Ioana is passionate about fighting injustice in all its forms and is a firm believer in the power of community and collective action. Through her experience fighting human trafficking in Romania and supporting victims, her efforts aim at bringing the issue on the public agenda and finding multisector approaches to counteracting human trafficking and related disappearances.

Ituango, Colombia

Isabel Zuleta

Isabel Cristina Zuleta is a spokeswoman for the communities affected by the Hidroituango megaproject - the largest hydroelectric project in Colombia. For eleven years, she has been leading the opposition to Hidroituango, demanding the protection of rivers in Colombia, the respect for communities’ rights, and the proper response to the disappearance cases in the region. Her resistance movement has been awarded the 2018 Colombia’s National Prize for Defence of Human Rights as well the Public Price for Peace in 2019.

Born in the municipality of Ituango, Isabel is herself a victim of the armed conflict and has been dedicated to studying its relationship with the mining-energy policy in Colombia as well as the presence of criminal groups. Having studied sociology and history, she is committed to promoting community-based efforts for the protection of human rights, especially for women's rights and environmental rights.

Meru, Kenya

Judie Kaberia

Judie Kaberia is a multi-award-winning journalist who in her over ten years of experience, served as a reporter and an associate editor. Her investigative work focused primarily on legal and justice issues, human rights, equality, and health. As a holder of a master's degree in New Media, Governance and Democracy, from the University of Leicester (UK), Judie has written a booklet, “Justice and Peace in the Kenyan Eye”, which elaborates on the 2007/8 post- election violence in Kenya.

Judie is the chair of The Woman’s Newsroom Foundation established to amplify the voice of women in the media. She also chairs the Africa Check Foundation board in Kenya, a subsidiary of Africa Check Trust-Africa’s leading independent fact-checking organization, and is currently the East African Coordinator for Wayamo Foundation.

Manila, Philippines

Mae Paner

Mae Paner, also known as Juana Change, is a performance artist and activist who has, over the past six administrations of the Philippine Government, taken up the role of a satirist, social critic, political loudmouth and a voice for public conscience. With the collaboration of national artists, she has interviewed dozens of survivors to bring their voices forward in the form on stage plays like Tao Pao (Still Human), one of her first collaborative efforts to fight desensitization and generate citizen’s responses against human rights violations.

In the time of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Benigno Aquino III, both former Presidents of the Philippines, the Juana Change team produced around 30 short videos that called out all forms of corruption and social injustice while advocating for critical thinking, discourse, and positive action. Her performances central pillar are the stories of those affected and, in many cases, left behind.

Culiacan, Mexico

Maria Isabel Cruz

Maria Isabel Cruz Bernal is a self-defined activist, human rights defender and a prominent voice representing the mothers of the disappeared in Culiacan, Mexico. A stylist by profession, she became an expert on the issue of disappearances since the disappearance of her son in 2017. She has gone through legal, psychological and criminology training to support her search for missing persons.

Consequently, with the support of mothers, sisters and daughters going through a similar situation, Maria Isabel founded the collective Sabuesos Guerreras - a civil society organisation supporting more than 300 families, joining efforts to identify and search those missing, and pressing for action at the state level. She has continued building her capacities in forensic anthropology and clandestine identification, participating in national and international workshops and conferences.

Manila, Philippines

Rafael Lerma

Raffy Lerma is a freelance photojournalist and documentary photographer based in Manila, Philippines. He began his career in photojournalism as a student of the College of Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines Diliman. For twelve years, Lerma has worked as a staff photographer for the Philippine Daily Inquirer covering the daily news beat in Metro Manila. He has recently shifted into working independently to focus on his documentation of the Philippines' ‘war on drugs’.

Lerma has been exhibiting his photographs and giving talks in different parts of the Philippines and the world to help disseminate to a broader audience the realities of the drug war in the country. His work has achieved in many cases to generate an outpouring of sympathy and outrage about the drug war from different segments of Philippine society.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Sok Phay Sean

Sok Phay Sean is an activist, whose actions have brought substantive responses from the Cambodian government. In 2002, he worked with the Cambodian Women’s Crisis Center and joined a coalition of women rights to lobby for legislation on domestic violence, subsequently leading to the passing of the law on the issue by the National Assembly in 2005.

In 2007, he organized a meeting between NGO leaders and Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where the issue of trafficking Cambodian girls into Taiwan was brought to the attention of the officials. As a result, the Cambodian government issued a sub-decree that strengthens the laws on marriages between Cambodians and foreigners to tackle human trafficking through false marriage schemes. In 2010, he led a team of NGOs to advocate for a free child helpline, which now helps over 4500 children and youth monthly across the country. He serves as Executive Director of the helpline.

Application Form

Full name

Nationality

Areas of work

Contact email

How organized crime has affected your community - with emphasis on this year's Fellowship theme of disappearances?

What does resilience mean to you and what have you done to encourage it in your community or the community you have been working with?

What tools do you need to continue doing that work?

Why do you need support from the Fellowship?

What would you like to achieve and gain from the Fellowship programme? (identify clear and specific actions)

If you are executing other grants or fellowships, please specify and explain the coordination mechanisms you will use to comply with all.

click here to attach a short biography (maximum 2 pages - 2 MB)

click here to attach an outline or portfolio of the work you’ve done so far. Please include any samples of your work (e.g.: news clippings, videos, documents, etc.) (maximum 5 MB)

Please answer to all the questions.

Please attach the required documents.

Aplicación en línea

Nombre completo

Nacionalidad

Área de trabajo

Email de contacto

¿Cómo el crimen organizado ha afectado a su comunidad, con énfasis en el tema anual de la beca (desapariciones)?

¿Qué significa la resiliencia para usted y qué ha hecho para fomentarla en su comunidad o en la comunidad con la que ha estado trabajando?

¿Qué herramientas necesita para seguir haciendo ese trabajo?

¿Por qué necesita el apoyo de este programa de becas?

¿Qué le gustaría lograr y obtener del programa de becas? (identificar acciones claras y específicas)

Si está ejecutando otras donaciones o becas, especifique y explique los mecanismos de coordinación que utilizará para cumplir con todos.

Por favor adjuntar una biografía corta (máximo 2 pág. - 2 MB)

Por favor adjuntar un resumen o un portafolio que haya realizado hasta el momento. Por favor incluya muestras de su trabajo (recortes de noticias, videos, documentos, etc.) (5 MB)

Por favor responder a todas las preguntas.

Por adjuntar el documento solicitado.

Formulaire en ligne

Nom et prénom

Nationalité

Domaine d'activité

Adresse électronique

Comment le crime organisé a affecté votre communauté - en mettant l'accent sur le thème de cette année (les disparitions)?

Que signifie la résilience pour vous et qu'avez-vous fait pour l'encourager dans votre communauté ou dans la communauté avec laquelle vous travaillez?

De quels outils avez-vous besoin pour continuer à faire ce travail?

Pourquoi avez-vous besoin du soutien de la Bourse?

Que voudriez-vous atteindre et gagner de la Bourse pour la Résilience ? (Identifier des actions claires et spécifiques)

Si vous exécutez d'autres subventions ou bourses, veuillez préciser et expliquer les mécanismes de coordination que vous utiliserez pour vous conformer à tous.

Veuillez joindre une courte biographie (maximum 2 pages - 2 MB)

Veuillez joindre un aperçu ou un portfolio du travail que vous avez effectué jusqu'à présent, y compris des exemples de votre travail (par exemple : des coupures de presse, des vidéos, des documents, etc.)(5 MB)

S’il vous plait, répondez au question manquant.

Veuillez joindre le document requis.