[Comments-fy19-budget-19jan18] Comment on the Reductions to Fellowship and NextGen seats in the proposed FY19 Total Budget | January 2018

[Isaac Maposa]

I would like to comment on the reductions to Fellowship and NextGen seats
in the proposed FY19 Budget | January 2018.

The Fellows and NextGen ambassadors are ICANN's touch points to the
community and they do help demystify ICANN and reach out to the
underrepresented communities. Unless we still want to keep ICANN to the few
who already know about ICANN and having ICANN labeled as some American
organization controlling how the domain name system is run, we should
maintain the fellowship and NextGen program at the current number of 60 and
20 respectively as a means of reaching out and carrying out different ICANN
capacity building programs in home countries and regions by the Fellows and
the ambassadors.


ICANN's policy development work is carried out by Volunteers and there is
always an issue of volunteer burnout within ICANN's work, a greater pool of
fellows will help bring in volunteers as evident currently where we do have
a reasonable number of fellows who are actively engaged in ICANN work and
some have assumed leadership positions and joined ICANN staff.


I am sure most fellows would agree to mantain the number of fellowships at
60 as evidenced on the petition signed by 279 fellows on the following
petition (Stop the ICANN Budget Cuts and Save the Fellowship Program!
<https://www.change.org/p/icann-stop-the-icann-budget-cuts-and-save-the-fellowship-program>),
I being one of them. This overwhelming response is evidence of how crucial
the fellowhip program is and it's impact.


In conclusion, I do suggest that the fellowship and NextGen programs must
be maintained at the current number of seats, but review and improve the
the programs so as to have increased fellowship and NextGen engagement and
effectiveness of the programs.


Warm Regards,

Isaac Maposa
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