In April 2023, I was granted a scholarship to attend a master's degree in the United Kingdom, but due to unforeseen and unavoidable circumstances I had to defer my plans. That year however, I continued my long term vision of working in my home-state of Nagaland as a practitioner to bring local communities to the forefront of conservation action and develop pathways for direct ownership and access to resources and funds. In this journey I took a decision to not pursue my master's since the on ground work got started and today we are at the precipice of real community led conservation momentum that could be exemplary for Nagaland as well as the wider sector.
To realize this effort and make it more sustainable I approached the scholarship organization with a proposal to turn this award into a community award for an indigenous research proposal, to which the organization agreed since their focus is not just a degree or a certification but also the research conducted during the course. However, there was one condition that this research becomes a part of a action-research training program of an educational of a research institute. So this message is for those who hold decision making positions at such institutes and would like to provide some guidance as well as official affiliation for the scholarship funds to be utilized for a community led conservation initiative.
The community members and I are eagerly looking to overcome this obstacle to generate local research outputs that can inform our conservation actions. The topic of the research is "Cultivating community-based conservation rooted in local ecological knowledge in the Old Jalukie Community Biodiversity Reserve (ICCA): A community-owned conservation initiative."
Please do connect - even if you are unable to support but would like to know more :)
Waiting in anticipation,
Preety
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Dear Preety, thank you for sharing this request for affiliation with an educational of a research institute. Does it matter where this institute is based (e.g. in India, in Nagaland, or certain km from the ICCA)?
Also tagging in some people who may be able to point you in a useful direction: @Shaleen Attre , @Arvind Kumar Chaurasia , and @Emily Caruso - who may have the connections you are looking for.
Thanks Thirza for your response. Emily is my mentor and we are trying to find connections. No, it does not matter where the institute is based, however since this is an indigenous research project that uses indigenous methods of data collection, we would like to connect with institutes who already do this kind of work or are interested in such.
thanks for clarifying Preety and great to hear Emily is already your mentor!
@Faisal Moola,, PhD, @Annie Tourette , @Nathan Schulfer, @Kahaso Mtana and @Aaniyah Martin : would you perhaps be able to provide help and/or any useful contacts for the above request?
@Mahesh Poudyal and @Bob Smith : any opportunity for an affiliation with DICE for Preety's funded project? See her message above. Thanks for your help!
Hello, Preety
I am Albert Sillo from Tanzania, currently with masters degree in Biodiversity and Ecosystem Management from Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST) from Arusha-Tanzania. In the past two years I requested for admission into PhD studies to the same institution which was NM-AIST but I was not able to join studies because I was not able to secure scholarship.
I am therefore asking if its good for me to go to the same university and explain the idea of your project and connect you with the professor's there so you can link your project there and I can be one among of the students to benefit the scholarship and other benefits.
Regards
Sillo
Hi Sillo, thanks for your ineterst. This scholarship is hardly enough to fund my and my team's field expenses and time, I am not sure how you can benefit from it, monetarily but yes you can use this idea if it helps polish your PhD idea and get you some scholarship. I am not sure what your topic is but happy to discuss some scholarship you may not have looked at, maybe?
thanks again and all the best,
Preety