Brian Wickham Young Person Exchange Program (BWYPEX)

2025-2026 Brian Wickham Young Persons Exchange Program Bursaries Awards

Key objectives of the Brian Wickham Young Persons Exchange Program. Preliminary considerations

What are we trying to do?

• To promote networking, develop skills, and build confidence among the young people within our organisations.

How are we proposing to do that?

• By creating an opportunity for them to interact with organisations in other countries within our ICAR member network, by taking ownership and researching an “ICAR topic of interest”.

What are the expected outcomes?

• More enhanced and engaged young people => investing in our future.

Answers to questions that are of strategic/technical interest to our members.

Key Elements

• Program is operated by ICAR. Steering committee (the BW YPEX committee) appointed by ICAR to run the program.
• Partner organisations are members of ICAR (e.g., ICBF, NZAEL or their affiliates etc).
• Funding model is partly user pays, supplemented by a foundation, i.e., ICAR and partners put in money (akin to a bursary/scholarship) to help support the annual running of the program.
• Young persons participating in the program should be; (i) Working within one of the partner organisations, (ii) Under age of 35 and (iii) Available to spend time interacting with a min of 2 external partners within the project, situated across 3 different geographical areas, e.g., Europe, North America, Australasia.
• “Topics of interest” should come from our members, i.e., aligned to the activities of our ICAR working groups.
• Reports/outcomes are available to all ICAR members, via our working groups, meetings, annual conference etc.

Funding Model

• Funding model based on; (i) donor organisation (already employing the young person), (ii) host organisations (hosting the visits by the young person) and (iii) the foundation (collective funds from ICAR and the wider participant organisations).
  • Partner organisations providing the young person continue to pay the salary of that person for the period of the work (expected to be at least 3 months, including travel).
    • Paid directly by the organisation to the young person (i.e., their staff member). Example cost; One person @ €60k/year => €15k per young person.
  • Hosting organisations cover the cost of accommodation during the time of the visit to their country/organisation.
    • Paid directly to the accommodation provider. Example cost; One person visiting a host for one month => €2.5k per month.
  • Travel + daily stipend costs covered from the foundation funds.
    • Paid directly by ICAR to the young person. Example costs; One person travelling across 3 centres and staying 1 month at each of the three centres => (~5 flights @ ~€1000/flight = €5000) + (~100 days @ ~€50/day = €5000) => €10,000.
  • Expectation that the requirement for foundation funds from ICAR and members ~€10k/person => assuming a voluntary contribution of €2k/member/year => a new scholarship can happen each year for every 5 contributing partners.

Key steps of the programme

The key steps and timeline for the 2024/25 BW YPEX are as follows ;

• Call 2024 Call for “Topics of interest” across our members.
• July 28th 2024 Close of call and selection of “topics of interest” by the BW YPEX committee.
• July 2024 Call for candidates, based on selected “topics of interest”.
• Aug 2024 Close of call and selection of candidates by the BW YPEX committee.
• Sep. 2024-May 2025 Program is operating “on the ground” – mentoring and interim reporting is overseen by  the BW YPEX committee
• May 2026 Presentation of the final reports.

The first step the in the Program is to put out a ‘call for topics’ to ICAR’s Sub Committees, Working Groups and Members in general.

Call for Topics of Interest

Topics should come from ICAR Sub-Committees and/or Working Groups. ICAR Sub Committees and Working Group Chairs should review with their members the needs of their respective committee/group if they think they have  a suitable ‘topic of interest’ to propose

Each topic should have;

1. A clear question to be addressed and relevant to ICAR’s work/activity.
2. Main elements linked to the question.
3. Expected outcomes.
4. A supporting structure (i.e., mentoring sub-group to support the young person during the period).
5. Indicative list of countries/organisations that are prepared to host and mentor the young person during the program.

ICAR SC’s and WG’s Chairs should submit the details of their proposed topics of interest on the ICAR Form here as Word file. The file also contains an example of topic of interest.