If you are a graduate-level student in a lower income country, working on a subject related to sustainable land use and poverty alleviation, and you need extra training, then our grant scheme may be of interest to you. Please read these guidelines to understand what we will do and do not fund, and how to fill in the application form.
Each year we receive many more applications than we have the funds to support, so it is important that, before submitting an application, you take a few minutes to read the information below, as it will help you to decide whether your application is eligible for funding.
STUDENT FUNDING
If your application does not meet all the following criteria it will not pass the initial shortlisting for consideration by the Trustees.
- Applications must be from students registered at university in a country classified by the UN as lower middle income, or low-income. Applicants registered at universities in other countries will NOT be funded.
- Applications seeking funding for equipment only, or attendance at conferences, will NOT be funded.
- Applications seeking scholarships to cover the costs of complete Bachelor, Masters or Doctorate courses, or parts of Bachelor, Masters or Doctorate courses will NOT be funded
- Applications seeking funding to cover the costs of Bachelor, Masters or Doctorate research projects will NOT be funded
- Applications that cannot demonstrate any relevance to sustainable poverty alleviation will NOT be funded.
- Applications from students studying degrees unrelated to agriculture, land use or the environment will NOT be funded.
If you have got this far then keep reading! The next section contains important guidance that must be followed for a student application to be successful.
- For applications made October-December 2023, for training to be completed in 2024, grants are provided EITHER to support costs of online training OR to support the costs of travel for in-person training. The choice of online or in-person training affects what types of cost are eligible to claim for us – see explanation further down this list.
- Training can be provided by any university or research organisation, but not the university/college with which you are normally registered, at the time of the application.
- Eligible students MUST be registered for graduate degrees (e.g. Masters or PhD level) and MUST be able to demonstrate that they have full support from the relevant university department/organisation that they are seeking training from.
- Preference will be given to training relevant to achieving sustainable land use, with an emphasis on animal, plant and soil interactions, where it can be demonstrated that, in addition to contributing to knowledge, they will have the potential to sustainably alleviate poverty, including adaptation/mitigation to the impact of climate change. Training outwith these areas will not be funded.
- The Trustees will only consider projects with a budget up to a maximum of £2,500. This is the upper limit, not an indication that you should request this amount.
- Applicants will be expected to provide a budget and full justification for the funding claimed. Applicants that do not provide an adequate breakdown of the anticipated expenditure will not be shortlisted for evaluation.
- The type of items that we will fund depend on whether you have applied for ‘online’ training (that does not require travel) OR in-person training (that does require travel).
- For the ‘online’ students grants, we are open to supporting any item or cost which is required to enable access to online training. This can include, enrolment charge by the course provider, the cost of network data charges, the cost of local travel to access a site with reliable internet connection, the cost of a device such as a tablet to enable online learning to be efficiently accessed. We will not fund international travel for these grants for online training.
- For the ‘in-person’ travel grants, you can apply for local and international travel costs including flights, accommodation and visa costs. You can also apply for training fees, enrolment charges, lab-books or other essential equipment needed to do the training. We will not fund the cost of laptops or data connections for these grants for travel to in-person training.
- Please do not send any additional documentation, such as exam results, CVs, letters of support, etc. These will not be used in the evaluation of your application. Appropriate references will be sought for student applications that pass the evaluation stage.
- The deadline for receipt of applications is 31st December each year. Applications received after this date will not be considered for evaluation.
- All applicants will be sent notification that their application has been received.
- Projects will be selected by an open application process. Grants will be awarded in March/April. Applicants will also be sent an email in March or April to inform them whether or not they have been successful. We will use the contact email address that you include on your application form, so please ensure that it is the correct address.
- All successful student applicants will be expected to provide a full report at the end of their funding period. This report will outline the outcomes from the application and a breakdown of the expenditure made.
- Applications must be submitted using the Orskov Foundation application form and sent as a word or pdf attachment to an email.
- All applications must be submitted in English.
Remember, each section of the application form has been included for a reason. In order to evaluate your application against all the others received, you must include text in each section of the application form, otherwise your application will not be shortlisted. Good luck!