Social Innovation Fellowship

The Social Innovation Fellowship provides meaningful community engagement and social innovation experiences for undergraduate students at Brown. Focusing on local partnerships and social impacts through the lens of innovation, this two-year developmental program offers students the opportunity to explore modes of social innovation, as well as the technical and conceptual skills and knowledge required for starting successful ventures or for making transformational changes within existing organizations. 

The Fellowship offers students the opportunity to be part of a learning community, together with other students, staff, faculty,  and community partners who are engaged in wrestling with and leveraging the promise and constraints of social innovation, social entrepreneurship, the dynamics of sustained community change, and the connections between academic and community work, active citizenship, and social change.

meet the Social Innovation Fellowship Cohorts
Structure

The Social Innovation Fellowship is a two-year developmental program that places the community at the center and offers students coaching and hands-on social innovation experience. Fellows also benefit from inclusion in the Swearer Center ecosystem of faculty, advisors, and students.

  • Fellows will have access to a curriculum designed to introduce and strengthen skills for social innovation in partnership with the Social Enterprise Greenhouse, community organizations, and campus partners.
  • Fellows will also have access to hands-on learning and mentorship through their community-based internships.
  • In addition, fellows receive an annual stipend of $2,000.

In year one, fellows will participate in regular workshops and intern with a community-based organization in Rhode Island. In year two, fellows continue engaging in regular workshops and can choose to either (1) explore a social innovation project of their own and/or (2) continue interning with the community-based organization they were matched with.

Eligibility/Timeline

The Social Innovation Fellowship is a two-year program and thus is open to first-year and second-year undergraduate students.

Apply

Applications for the Social Innovation Fellowship can be found on UFunds. The 2024 cohort application will open on Monday, March 18, 2024. The application deadline is Friday, April 12, 2024. Applicants will be notified of acceptance by Thursday, April 25, 2024.

Contact

Austin Wilson, Program Manager for Community Engaged Learning: [email protected]