It is the first time ever when Nations Development Institute (NDI) has initiated a college based scholarship program in the field of agriculture to motivate and enhance the potential interest of native students to get enrolled into the agriculture division from native population.
The nation’s first native agriculture and food system scholarship program will render $1000 scholarship for every 6 hard slogging students annually to native college students doing specialization in agriculture disciplines, but not restricted to agri-business management. It can be applied on green agriculture or food systems, aquaculture and wildlife, agri-science technologies, food production, animal husbandry, irrigation methods, agri policy and law making, plant based nutrition and horticulture.
The president of the scholarship program, Michael E. Roberts passed the statement that, "Simply put, we believe that reclaiming control over Indian agriculture in general and local food systems in particular is critical to ensuring the long-lasting health and economic well-being of Native people and their communities, so that's why we're launching this program,"
The local food infrastructure has enough tendency to boost up the food production, healthy and nutrition and eradicate all the concerns that rural communities are stumbled with, while it will encourage the entrepreneurship, cultural revitalization and certainly economic development, said Roberts.
After inaugurating the agriculture scholarship program, many of the graduates will attract towards this area as their primary career path, he said.
In order to meet the criteria for a scholarship program, the students must be enrolled in full-time graduate or undergraduate programs and specializing in any relevant field mentioned above from any registered college, institute or university. The tribal educational institutions are also valid for this program and the student must secure a GPA of not lower than 3.0.
All the candidates are required to fill up an online form and also supply other necessary information for further processing the application such as tribal documentation, unofficial records, college enrollment endorsement, a recommendation letter verified from faculty member and submitting a short written essay.
