Bertha Challenge 2025 Fellowship for Activists and Investigative Journalists

Position description

We are delighted to announce applications are now open for the Bertha Challenge Fellowship 2025, focusing on farming and the climate crisis.

The Bertha Challenge is a year-long paid Fellowship for activists and investigative journalists to investigate, amplify and connect around a pressing social justice issue. The Fellowship will begin in January 2025, supporting Fellows to answer the following question:

How is the interconnectedness between corporate interests and political power in farming contributing to the global climate crisis and what do people and communities do to expose this?

Successful applicants will receive non-residential paid Fellowships and Project Funds to develop products that respond to the Bertha Challenge question.

Fellowship Requirements

This is a full-time Fellowship. Bertha Fellows will spend their time working in their home countries and be required to:

• Attend an in-person global convening that will take place towards the beginning of the Challenge
• Develop and deliver a project that responds to the Bertha Challenge question
• Participate in two virtual meetings per month, and occasionally facilitate these meetings
• Develop local and global network relationships.

The centerpiece of this Fellowship program is the work Fellows will produce to communicate their Bertha Challenge findings to a specified audience.

These pieces of work should first and foremost serve an identified target audience. For activists this might be supporters within their network, for investigative journalists it might be readers of their newspaper. We encourage applicants to be specific about the audience they intend to reach and how they intend to do so.

Application Requirements

All applicants must submit:

• A completed online application form
• A brief resume/CV in English of no more than three pages
• A list of 2-4 referees including name, relationship to applicant and contact details
• A signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) from the prospective host organization – including commensurate salary and any benefits provided.
• Examples of previous work.

Host Organizations

Fellowship applicants are required to secure a host organization in their home country to receive and administer the Fellowship award and Project Funds. Host organizations must be legally structured to receive grant funding and be able to process payroll. Host organizations must share a commitment to the Bertha Challenge objectives and conditions, and commit to publishing/ broadcasting Fellows’ work optimally throughout the year. 

For an investigative journalist, the host organization should be a media outlet with the capacity to distribute/ publish work delivered by the Fellow. For an activist, the host organization should be an NGO, community organization or social movement.

Level of Language Proficiency

Applicants may come from and work in any country, but to ensure that the cohort of Bertha Fellows is able to be fully participatory, we require all applicants to be proficient in spoken and written English and able to deliver their final work in English.

Application instructions

Please be sure to indicate you saw this position on globalvacancies.org