Our Work

Offering Fellowships

2023 Fellowship Application Now Open!

Keep reading for all the details and how to apply, or sign up for an upcoming informational webinar.

Voqal Believes

People change the world.

Ideas are the catalyst for that change.

Voqal’s Fellowship is an investment in you as a person and a budding entrepreneur, both a talent and startup accelerator that targets those historically left on the outside for a chance to enact their vision at center stage.

Voqal seeks social justice-oriented leaders, thinkers, doers, and believers who have an idea for a new way to organize communities and bring about equitable social change. Page through our full Applicant Guide for an in-depth review of the program, application process, and application evaluation criteria.

 

Ready to Apply?

Applications are open from September 6 through Monday, October 31, 2022, at 11:59 p.m. EST (8:59 p.m. PST).

Enter the application portal to begin. We also offer a process guide to complete the application and a preview of the questions.

First time applying for a Fellowship? Not sure where to begin? Nervous? Excited? Then this is for you. Voqal knows this can be an intimidating process and we are here to help. We host two online information sessions to review the application process and answer your questions. Both sessions will cover the same information, so you only need to attend one.

Voqal held the first session on Thursday, September 15. You can view the recording, a questions and answers list from the live session, and the slides. The recording also includes a transcript available for download and review.

If you want to join the second live session, it will be on Wednesday, October 12 at 4 p.m. ET (3 p.m. CT, 2 p.m. MT, 1 p.m. PT). Click here to register and receive a connection link.

Also in Our Work

Featured Fellows

Irene Romulo

Irene Romulo is a Chicago-born and raised Mexican. She started organizing seven years ago in Oakland around housing and immigrant rights issues. Since then, she has devoted herself to ending deportations and the criminalization of Black and Brown people in Chicago.

Romulo’s project, Cicero Independiente,  is focused on creating a hyperlocal space for civic engagement rooted in accessible news production by and for people of color, non-English speakers and those who are excluded from traditional media models.

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Richard Wallace

Richard Wallace is a Chicago native and dually an organizer and artist in the fight to end economic violence and anti-Black racism. He is a graduate of Roosevelt University, where he received its prestigious Matthew Freeman Social Justice Award and founded Roosevelt University’s student chapter of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network.

Wallace’s project, Equity and Transformation (EAT) is an organization that uses an innovative approach to community organizing that harnesses the voices of Chicago’s informal economy to advance social change locally and increase equity for those who are the most excluded politically, economically and socially.

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Alicia Nieves

Nieves is the co-founder and project lead at Streetwide. Before founding Streetwide, Alicia was a legal fellow with Justfix.nyc, a housing tech nonprofit in New York City where she helped low-income tenants use the Justfix web application to build affirmative legal cases against their neglectful and abusive landlords.

Her project, Streetwide, is a nonprofit project leveraging technology and data for immigrant communities.

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Fellows