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MENA governments - especially in Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia - have undertaken important reform initiatives to modernize their public administrations and pass access to information laws. Several have applied to join the Open Government Partnership (OGP), an international initiative that aims to leverage capabilities of new technologies to strengthen participatory governance and fight corruption. Further actions are required to sustain this progress and implement open government principles that foster civil society collaboration with government. This project will assist governments in developing action plans to improve management and governance activities such as: budgeting, human resources management, regulatory practices, public integrity, public procurement, digital government, open government and data, risk management, and innovations. By focusing on public governance areas and creating inclusive economies and societies, this project will guide governments to benchmark their countries' progress on public sector reforms at the national and regional levels, and to compare them against international standards. Additionally, it will create the first MENA long-term strategic partnership and governance network for policy dialogue and exchange of good practices. Finally, it will deliver ad hoc policy recommendations to advance public sector reform agendas in specific sectors at the national or regional level with a focus on policies pertaining to women and youth.

Five years ago, the BLM and Northern Cheyenne Tribe started an Ecoregional Ethnographic Assessment (EEA) project covering two ecoregions in Montana. The BLM would like to expand this project to cover most of the ecoregions in Montana. The BLM is seeking a partner who will have a close working relationship with the Tribal Elders, who hold and share their Traditional Cultural Knowledge for the Tribe. The recipient will use the template developed by the Northern Cheyenne for their EEA project. The BLM is interested in gaining more information from the Crow Tribe to use in management decisions for land use, enhancement and protection. The recipient will provide appropriate information to the BLM for use in planning, restoration, recovery of habitats for plant and animal species and possibly interpretation for the public. Objectives: To initiate a process to identify, document, evaluate, and map places of traditional religious or cultural significance to the Crow Tribe. In addition, the recipient will identify culturally important plant and animal species and their appropriate conservation elements; and assess the potential effects of identified change agents upon identified conservation elements.Public Benefit: This project will provide valuable information and will assist land managers to preserve and protect cultural and natural resources for the benefit of the general public, tribes and BLM. The ethnographic information on plants and the subsequent impacts, combined with scientific information, provide important insight to what is occurring on the landscape. The evidence provides a more holistic glimpse into the past, present and will help in developing a plan for the future.

Through this project entitled, Country Health Information Systems and Data Use (CHISU), USAID seeks to award a cooperative agreement to strengthen health information systems in low and middle income countries (LMIC) supported by USAID health programming. The overall goal of CHISU is to strengthen country capacity and leadership to manage and use health information systems to improve evidence-based decisions. The project will focus on enhancing host-country capacity to produce high-quality health information, to optimally manage this information and to institutionalize evidence-based decision making. It will align activities, priorities and systems with host-country strategic health objectives and contribute to a country's own development journey. This project will build upon USAID's Global Health Bureau's (GH) long-history promoting the use of data for decision making and enhancing health information systems in collaboration with host country counterparts.

The Minority Serving Institutions Partnership Program (MSIPP) is a vital program within the DOE/NNSA Management and Budget, Learning and Career Management which awards grants to Minority Serving Institutions (MSI) to prepare NNSA's next-generation technical workforce. MSIPP aligns investments in university capacity and workforce development with DOE/NNSA mission areas to develop the needed skills and talent for DOE/NNSA's enduring technical workforce and to enhance research and education at MSIs. The program's primary mission is to create and foster a sustainable STEM-pipeline that prepares a diverse workforce of world class talent through strategic partnerships between Minority Serving Institutions and the DOE/NNSA Enterprise. To execute this mission, MSIPP builds a network of NSE ready students through enrichment activities from K-20 to post-doctoral level. Through university-lab consortia partnerships students are exposed to cutting-edge research and activities in their relevant fields.

The DoD Legacy Resource Management Program (Legacy Program) provides funding to high priority conservation projects that foster mission sustainment while promoting long-term stewardship of our nation's natural and cultural heritage. All projects must address at least one of the Areas of Emphasis (AOEs) and support the mission-relevant priorities that form the basis of DoD's Natural and Cultural Resources Programs. Proposals must identify any relationship between the proposed work and other similar efforts that are currently underway or completed.

The CHM master is a one year program in partnership with the Unesco Chair in Cultural Tourism and Development at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne under the direction of Prof. Fekri Hassan and Prof. Maria Gravari-Barbas. Its third edition will be offered from October the 7th 2013. Scholarships are available for candidate sending their cv, scanned copy of degree documents and motivation letter stating clearly that they apply for the scholarship!Please email your documents to heritagemaster@ufe.edu.eg before June the 23rd. It includes a variety of topics related to cultural heritage management structured in core courses and specialised courses in 1.Cultural Tourism, 2.Museum Studies, 3.Architectural and Urban Heritage. All courses and course materials are in English and address a public of graduated and professionals working in the field of heritage. Lessons are offered during three afternoons per week and often a field trip during the Saturdays is organised to combine an on site experience with the theoretical data. A summer internship has to be undertaken as integral part of the curriculum during the summer semester and at the conclusion of the courses a research master thesis will be presented in an oral examination session in front of a mixed commission of Egyptian and French experts and professors.

AUTHORITY: Grant making authority for the Program for Research and Training on Eastern Europe and the Independent States of the Former Soviet Union (Title VIII) is contained in the Soviet-Eastern European Research and Training Act of 1983 (22 U.S.C. 4501-4508, as amended). PURPOSE: Congress determined that independently verified factual knowledge about the countries of Eastern Europe and Eurasia is critical to the national security of the United States, the furtherance of its national interests in the conduct of foreign relations, and the prudent management of its domestic affairs. Congress further concluded that providing a stable and dedicated source of financial support for Title VIII functions supplementing other Federal, State, local, regional, and private sector funding is critical to maintaining this important research and training on a long-term, national scale. The development and maintenance of U.S. expertise on these regions depends upon a national capability for advanced research by highly trained specialists with in-country experience. These specialists are a national resource available for service in and out of Government. In order to guarantee the existence of that knowledge and the capability to sustain it, certain essential functions are necessary, including: a. graduate training; b. advanced research; c. public dissemination of research data, methods, and findings; d. contact and collaboration among Government and private specialists; and e. American specialists? firsthand experience of the countries of Eastern Europe and Eurasia, including on-site advanced training and research to the extent practicable. For further information or to arrange a consultation, please contact BristolA@state.gov.

The Arts Envoy Program annually enables approximately 200 American artists and cultural experts (known as Arts Envoys) to travel abroad for individual programs or as part of an ensemble or group to engage and consult with key foreign audiences through performances, workshops, meetings, seminars, and appearances in foreign media. By addressing topics identified and developed by U.S. Missions (generally U.S. Embassies and Consulates) worldwide in cooperation with ECA, the program promotes an understanding of U.S. policies and institutions, and the political, economic, social, and cultural context from which they arise. Arts Envoy individuals and groups are programmed in one or more countries with a variety of audiences from a wide range of disciplines in the cultural arena, including in the performing and visual arts, and in arts management, as well as with museum professionals and other cultural experts. Arts Envoy programs range from five days to six weeks in length. For more information, please see the full announcement.

This funding partnership between the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) supports projects to develop and advance knowledge concerning endangered human languages. Made urgent by the imminent death of roughly half of the approximately 7000 currently used languages, this effort aims to exploit advances in information technology to build computational infrastructure for endangered language research. The program supports projects that contribute to data management and archiving, and to the development of the next generation of researchers. Funding can support fieldwork and other activities relevant to the digital recording, documenting, and archiving of endangered languages, including the preparation of lexicons, grammars, text samples, and databases. Funding will be available in the form of one- to three-year senior research grants as well as fellowships for up to twelve months and doctoral dissertation research improvement grants for up to 24 months.

Artstor is proud to announce the Digital Humanities Award. This award recognizes the most innovative and intellectually stimulating projects in this growing field as part of Artstor's commitment to enhance scholarship and teaching across all disciplines through the use of digital media. Award recipients will receive five years of free access to Artstor's innovative cloud-based digital asset management tool, Shared Shelf. Attached are an HTML and PDF version of this announcement to share with your users, colleagues and community.

Together with University Advancement, the Office for the Advancement of Research & Scholarship (OARS) is rolling out an new crowdfunding platform called HawksNest. Through HawksNest, alumni, family, and friends of the university can directly support the research, scholarship, and service projects of Miami University students, faculty, and staff. This is how HawksNest works: * Any Miami University student, faculty, or staff member may complete an online application to have a project considered for funding. * An internal review team assesses applications and posts approved projects on HawksNest for a maximum of 45 days. * Potential donors visit the site to learn about and pledge funds to approved projects. * Once a funding goal has been met, the project can begin! * Project managers use the site to keep donors up-to-date with information on the project's progress.

In 2016, the National Science Foundation (NSF) unveiled a set of "Big Ideas," 10 bold, long-term research and process ideas that identify areas for future investment at the frontiers of science and engineering (seehttps://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/big_ideas/index.jsp). The Big Ideas represent unique opportunities to position our Nation at the cutting edge of global science and engineering leadership by bringing together diverse disciplinary perspectives to support convergence research. As such, when responding to this solicitation, even though proposals must be submitted tothe Division of Emerging Frontiers in the Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO/EF),once received, the proposals will be managed by a cross-disciplinary team of NSF Program Directors. The purpose of the Understanding the Rules of Life: Epigenetics (URoL:Epigenetics) program is to enable innovative research and to promote multidisciplinary education and workforce training in the broad area of epigenetics. The URoL:Epigenetics program is a widecollaborationacross Directorates/Offices within the National Science Foundation with a focus on understanding the relationship between epigenetic mechanisms associated with environmental change, the resultant phenotypes of organisms, and how these mechanisms lead to robustness and adaptability of organisms and populations. Understanding the Rules of Life (URoL): PredictingPhenotypeis one of NSF's 10 Big Ideasand is focused on predicting the set of observable characteristics (phenotype) from the genetic makeup of the individual and the nature of its environment.

The Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections (SCHC) program helps cultural institutions meet the complex challenge of preserving large and diverse holdings of humanities materials for future generations by supporting sustainable conservation measures that mitigate deterioration, prolong the useful life of collections, and support institutional resilience: the ability to anticipate and respond to natural and man-made disasters. Cultural institutions, including libraries, archives, museums, and historical organizations, face an enormous challenge: to preserve humanities collections that facilitate research, strengthen teaching, and provide opportunities for life-long learning. To ensure the preservation of books and manuscripts, photographs, sound recordings and moving images, archaeological and ethnographic artifacts, art, and historical objects, cultural institutions must implement measures that slow deterioration and prevent catastrophic loss from natural or man-made emergencies. They can accomplish this work most effectively through preventive conservation. Preventive conservation encompasses managing relative humidity, temperature, light, and pollutants in collection spaces; providing protective storage enclosures and systems for collections; and safeguarding collections from theft, fire, floods, and other disasters. As museums, libraries, archives, and other collecting institutions strive to be effective stewards of humanities collections, they must find ways to implement preventive conservation measures that are sustainable. This program therefore helps cultural repositories plan and implement preservation strategies that pragmatically balance effectiveness, cost, and environmental impact. Sustainable approaches to preservation can contribute to an institution's financial health, reduce its use of fossil fuels, and benefit its green initiatives, while ensuring that collections are well cared for and available for use in humanities programming, education, and r

The Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections (SCHC) program helps cultural institutions meet the complex challenge of preserving large and diverse holdings of humanities materials for future generations by supporting sustainable conservation measures that mitigate deterioration, prolong the useful life of collections, and support institutional resilience: the ability to anticipate and respond to disasters resulting from natural or human activity. Cultural institutions, including libraries, archives, museums, and historical organizations, face an enormous challenge: to preserve humanities collections that facilitate research, strengthen teaching, and provide opportunities for life-long learning. To ensure the preservation of books and manuscripts, photographs, sound recordings and moving images, archaeological and ethnographic artifacts, art, and historical objects, cultural institutions must implement measures that slow deterioration and prevent catastrophic loss from emergencies resulting from natural or human activity. They can accomplish this work most effectively through preventive conservation. Preventive conservation encompasses managing relative humidity, temperature, light, and pollutants in collection spaces; providing protective storage enclosures and systems for collections; and safeguarding collections from theft, fire, floods, and other disasters.

This funding partnership between the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) supports projects to develop and advance knowledge concerning dynamic language infrastructure in the context of endangered human languages-languages that are both understudied and at risk of falling out of use. Made urgent by the imminent loss of roughly half of the approximately 7000 currently used languages, this effort aims to exploit advances in information technology to build computational infrastructure for endangered language research. The program supports projects that contribute to data management and archiving, and to the development of the next generation of researchers. Funding can support fieldwork and other activities relevant to the digital recording, documentation and analysis, and archiving of endangered language data, including the preparation of lexicons, grammars, text samples, and databases. Funding will be available in the form of one- to three-year senior research grants, fellowships from six to twelve months, and conference proposals. Note: a conference proposal should generally be submitted at least a year in advance of the scheduled date of the conference. For additional information about creating and submitting conference proposals, please refer to Chapter II. D.7 of the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide.

The Thriving Cultures program is based on a belief that communities with robust arts and culture are more cohesive and prosperous, and benefit from the diversity of their residents. We know that artists and cultural organizations can help us explore shared values and spark innovation, imagination and advancement for our communities. Too often, however, arts and culture is undervalued as a catalyst for creating just and sustainable communities, which is a key priority for the Surdna Foundation. The Thriving Cultures Program seeks to create just and sustainable communities in four ways: Teens' Artistic and Cultural Advancement We support artistic training programs that help teens explore their cultural identity and equip them with the life-enhancing skills they need to achieve their educational and career goals. Community Engaged Design We support efforts to involve artists, architects and designers in community-engaged problem solving and development efforts. Artists and Economic Development We support efforts that provide artists with business training and financial resources that enable them to be, and create, valuable economic assets for their communities. Artists Engaging in Social Change We support the potential of artists to be catalysts for social change and to promote the cultural traditions of their communities. We seek organizations that: -Embrace artistic and design excellence; -Find innovative ways to use arts and culture to make communities more just and sustainable; -Prioritize the needs of low-income communities and people of color in their work; -Maintain sound financial practices and management; and -Demonstrate a capacity and willingness to share best practices and knowledge with their colleagues and others in the field.

The American Film Showcase (AFS) is the State Department's flagship film exchange program and is implemented by the University of Southern California's (USC) School of Cinematic Arts. AFS supports the exchange of U.S. films, filmmakers, and film experts in support of foreign policy priorities. The Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy South Africa announces an open competition for organizations to submit applications to support the 2020 American Film Showcase in South Africa, with a specific focus on the use of documentary film for conveying human rights messages. Concept notes are requested from organizations that have the necessary capacity, experience, and knowledge to support the implementation of the AFS 2020 program in South Africa. Logistical and financial management capabilities, linkages with existing film events and programs, and a focus on innovative approaches will be critical components of a successful proposal. AFS brings award-winning contemporary American documentaries, independent films, and filmmaking know-how to audiences around the world, offering a view of American society and culture as seen by independent filmmakers. Funded by a grant from the State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) and produced by the USC School of Cinematic Arts (SCA), the Showcase highlights the value of film in fostering understanding and cooperation, dialogue, and debate. AFS will include a visit from American documentary filmmakers to engage with local audiences, as well as a film collection for use in related activities. See: http://americanfilmshowcase.com/current-afs-slate/. A U.S. government staff member must be present at all screenings of films provided through AFS, and Embassy officials will guide the selection of films for the activities implemented through this project.

The Science of Science: Discovery, Communication, and Impact (SOS:DCI) program is designed to understand the scientific research enterprise and increase the public value of scientific activity. The program pursues this goal by supporting basic research in three fundamental areas: How to increase the rate of socially beneficial discovery; How to improve science communication outcomes; and How to expand the societal benefits of scientific activity. The SOS:DCI program, which builds upon the former SciSIP program, funds research that builds theoretical and empirical understandings of these three areas. With this goal in mind, proposals should: Develop data, models, indicators, and associated analytical tools that constitute and enable transformative advances rather than incremental change. Identify ethical challenges and mitigate potential risks to people and institutions. Provide credible metrics and rigorous assessments of their proposed project's impact. Include robust data management plans, preregistration plans where appropriate, and related commitments that increase the usability, validity, and reliability of scientific materials

Indiana University's African Studies Program invites applications for a short-term residency to conduct research in IU's Libraries/African Studies Collections. Indiana University's African Studies Collection ranks among the top tier of such collections in the U.S. It comprises more than 150,000 volumes of monographs and over 700 serial subscriptions as well as materials in other formats (e.g. posters, slides, film/video, audio tapes, etc). The focus of the collection is on the humanities and social sciences, supporting a wide range of students and faculty in such departments as history, anthropology, fine arts, theatre & drama, literature, folklore, ethnomusicology, communication and culture, linguistics, religious studies, education, political science, business, economics, journalism, and applied health science. This residency is intended for faculty members at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or at other U.S. colleges / universities with limited Africa collections, to conduct research in Indiana University's libraries and special collections in support of curriculum development or publications. The successful applicant will receive an award that covers domestic travel, accommodations in Bloomington, and a modest per diem for up to two weeks of research. The award will cover expenses up to a maximum of $2,000 and must be used before August 01, 2014. The recipient is expected to reside in Bloomington during the period of her/his award.

The University of Chicago is offering talented individuals from traditionally underrepresented populations an expenses-paid opportunity to explore graduate education at the University of Chicago. Join us for a weekend of graduate admissions workshops, presentations by world-renowned faculty and their graduate students, and informal socials. Receive advice on submitting a competitive application to graduate programs and learn how to develop your own career as a scientist, academic, or professional.