Opportunities For Youth

The Netherlands Fellowship Programmes (NFP) are demandoriented fellowship programmes initiated and fully funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs from the budget for development cooperation. The ministry has contracted the Netherlands Organization for International Cooperation in Higher Education (Nuffic) to administer this programme.

Overview
The overall aim of the NFP is to help alleviate qualitative and quantitative shortages of skilled manpower within a wide range of governmental, private and non-governmental organizations. This by offering fellowships to professionals to improve their capacity to contribute to the development of their employing organizations.

The NFP target group consists of mid-career professionals who are already in employment and who are nationals of and working in one of the 61 selected NFP countries. The list of 61 NFP countries can be found in annex 4. While fellowships are awarded to individuals, the need for training must occur within the context of the organization for which an applicant works. The training must help the organization to develop its capacity. This means that applicants must be nominated by their employers. In fact, an application without the support of an employer will not be considered.

50% of the available fellowships should be awarded to fellowships for female candidates, and 50% of the available budget should be spent on candidates from sub-Saharan Africa. Apart from this, priority is given to candidates from priority groups and/or from marginalized regions to be defined by the embassies.

NFP sub-programmes:

The NFP offers the following options:

Individual fellowships for:

short courses;
master’s degree programmes;
PhD studies.
Group training:

refresher courses.
All four NFP sub-programmes are described in this publication. For each of the options, a separate section provides information regarding eligibility, the application and selection procedures, as well as the deadlines.

The fellowship

An NFP fellowship is intended to supplement the salary that the fellowship holder should continue to receive (at least partially) during the study period. The allowance is considered to be a contribution towards the cost of living for one person, whether in the Netherlands or in another country. The fellowship can also cover the costs of tuition fees, and of visas, travel, insurance and thesis research, as specified in the NFP booklet ‘Rules and regulations for fellowship holders’. This booklet can be downloaded from www.nuffic.nl/nfp.