New voices Citizen fellowship

The Raising New Voices Initiative (RNVi) in collaboration with The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Nigeria initiated the New Voices Citizen Fellowship intending to raise a new set of citizens who care about the issues in their community, understand the institutions of democracy enough to engage elected officials on these issues and get the problems of their community on the agenda of the government till the issues are solved.

The fellowship is designed as a hands-on learning and development program that required fellows to develop programs and activities through which they can resolve some of the issues bedevilling their local government. These solutions are then discussed during the classes and fine-tuned to ensure potency and sustainability.

The citizen fellows are required to continually work on an issue throughout their fellowship. They are required to organize other citizens, community stakeholders, institutions, and government agencies to resolve the issues they identified. They will debate and amplify issues using traditional and new media till issues have been identified and solved for their communities while leading a set of other citizens interested in organizing for their communities. In the end, they are expected to turn in reports on their work in line with the templates and formats that will be provided.

The citizen fellows are trained on Advocacy and Nation-building; Development, Poverty and Prosperity; Building Social and Political Capital; Organisational building and Grants writing, Tax system in Nigeria; Political Participation and political Parties; Local government administration; and Running for Elections and Legislative Process.