Society for Conservation GIS - Online Application Form

Organization name:

Organization full street address (in your local format):

Organization full mailing address, if different:

Country:

Work phone with country and area code:

Work fax with country and area code:

Main email:

Organization Web site URL if any:

Organization subject keywords:
Please use any of the following keywords to characterize your organization. Please also feel free to add any other keywords relevant to the organization activities!
admin, advocacy, agriculture, air quality, alternate energy, analysis, anthropology, aquatic, archeology, biodiversity, biology, birds, botanic garden, botany, caves karst, climate, climate change, coast, conservation, core-corridor, critical sites, database design, data center, data integration, data source, desertification, ecology, education, emergency, envir education, envir justice, envir law, epidemiology, fire, first nations, fish, forest, GAP analysis, geology, greenways, haz mat, health, herptiles, history, hydrology, insects, inventory, invertebrates, landscape analysis, land trust, mammals, marine, mediation, mitigation, modeling, monitoring, museum, parks, planning policy, pollution, populations, protected areas, open space, ranch, recreation, recycling, remote sensing, restoration, river, soil, species, statistics, sustainable development, trails, tribal, vegetation, water, water quality, watersheds, web, wetlands, wildlife,  wilderness, youth.

Confidential: your organization's last year total budget:

Confidential: your last year's total GIS program budget:
Please enter your best estimates of your last year total organizational budget, and your best estimate of last year's total GIS budget including hardware, software, salaries and maintenance. Please feel free to include any comments if you think they will help us better understand your situation.

Your full name:
You can provide your full name to any extent that you find appropriate. The format is completely flexible, and it does not have to be exactly ‘full’ in official terms.

Your honorific (e.g. Mr., Ms., Dr.):

Your preferred informal name:
You can help us better understand you if you provide your preferred “informal” name for cases where using full name is redundant. The format for the “informal” name is completely open to your discretion. You may leave this field blank if you want.

Your direct address if different:

Your direct phone number(s):

Your job title or role in the organization:

Your own interest keywords:
For your interest keywords, please use the list of keywords above (see ORGANIZATION section), plus any missing keywords that you would like to include.

Alternate contact full name:
Please provide contact details for an alternate contact person. We may ask this person to convey important information to you when you are in the field or out of contact for some other reason. These contact details will not be used for any other purpose, and will not be shared with any third party.

Alternate honorific (i.e. Mr., Ms., Dr.):

Alternate contact direct phone number(s):

Alternate contact direct email address(es):

Alternate contact job title or role:

Your departure airport to travel to the U.S.:
Please let us know what airport you will be flying from if you travel to California, USA (the FIRST airport in your entire trip). This helps us better understand your actual travel needs. If possible, please provide the 3-letter international code for your airport.

Total ROUNDTRIP airfare (in U.S. Dollars) to travel to Los Angeles, CA (LAX), or to Ontario, CA (ONT) in June:
Please research the round-trip airfares from your local airport to the airports indicated in these two questions.

Airfare amount you can pay yourself (in U.S. Dollars):

Airfare amount requested from SCGIS (in U.S. Dollars):
Typically we expect our applicants to cover a part of their travel costs, through additional fundraising or other resources. In very rare cases we provide a full airfare, but to be eligible you must provide a thorough explanation in the justification section (below).

Accommodation/Food/Local Transport costs that you can pay (in U.S. Dollars):
If you are awarded a SCGIS scholarship, you will come to the U.S. for 4 weeks. Typically, this may cost over $5,000. SCGIS volunteers work hard to reduce costs through finding discounts, ride sharing, cooking options etc. This allows us to reduce these per person costs to $2,000 on average.

Will you share a private home?

Will you share a motel room?

Will you Camp?

Do you need to borrow camping equipment?
One of the ways for us to reduce lodging costs is to provide accommodation at SCGIS activists’ homes, sharing hotel and dorm rooms, or sometimes even tents where conditions permit. Please let us know your accommodation preference/flexibility. If you can bring your own sleeping bag and pad, please also indicate here.

Any special notes regarding Accommodation/Food/Local Transport in California:
If you have any health or other conditions that require special food or lodging please let us know. Also, please feel free to tell us anything regarding local accommodation or food or transport arrangements in California that you think we should know about.

Briefly describe your GIS capability/expertise:
Please briefly explain your GIS expertise / capability level - BEGINNER, MEDIUM or ADVANCED. Please feel free to comment in open format.

What GIS software (if any) have you used?:
Please provide details on what GIS software have you used, and briefly describe operations that you have implemented in your GIS work.

Please describe your programming experience (if any):
Please note that knowledge of programming is not necessary for using GIS. However, today’s GIS software products allow users to extend the functionality through writing scripts in programming languages such as Visual Basic, Python, C++, etc. If you have any programming experience, please mention, this will help us to better understand your level of skills.

What organization or individual helps you learn GIS (your mentor)?
Learning GIS is challenging! There are advanced international groups or individuals who support developing grass-root organizations in building GIS capacity through providing software, hardware, training, and general mentorship until the GIS program reaches maturity in the organization. If you have such a mentor, please give us their contact details. We may contact the mentor to better learn about your GIS program. We will not use the contact information in any other way.

Your mentor’s email address:

Your mentor’s phone number:

What GIS courses are you interested in?
PLEASE SEE INSTRUCTIONS!

What GIS hardware do you most critically need (please arrange list in order of priority)?

Essay justification of why you require a grant:
This is a VERY IMPORTANT section! Please explain us why you would like to join the SCGIS training and attend the conferences, and why you need a scholarship grant for that. Justification cannot be as short as “I need to improve my skills, and I can’t afford the trip”. We need to know in detail why you need new contacts, new skills and so on, and a detailed justification why you are asking for financial assistance.

Title of the paper you will present:

Abstract/summary of the paper you will present:
Please provide the information about the paper you will present if awarded a scholarship. You do not have to have the whole paper finalized a this point, we just need a one paragraph abstract. If selected as a scholar, you will be contacted by the papers coordinator for details about your paper (final title and abstract text, full list of authors, etc.).

This is a VERY IMPORTANT section! In the following sub-sections, please try to be as detailed as possible. Remember, we can only make an award decision if we clearly understand the role that your organization and you play in the field of conservation, and if we understand the role of the GIS component in your work!
In this section you might be using abbreviations and landmark names – please remember to explain these carefully, as suggested in the General Application Instructions. PLEASE SEE MORE INSTRUCTIONS!

HISTORY: Please describe the history of your local work in conservation and GIS:
It’s important for us to know the history of your work – your personal history of involvement in conservation, or your organization’s history and your role in the organization’s projects.
Please do not hesitate to explain how long you have been involved in conservation and GIS, what projects or actions you have worked in, your motivation for working in conservation, and anything else that you think is relevant here.

LOCAL INVOLVEMENT: Please describe how you work in your local conservation community:
If you and your organization work with other local NGO's or institutions, please elaborate and please provide full contact information for at least one of them.

INTERNATIONAL: Please describe how your work involves cooperation with any international groups:
If cooperation with international groups is an important component of your work, please provide details here. Such cooperation may be in the form of support coming from these groups, or in the form of involvement in international conservation projects, networks etc. If applicable, please provide full contact information for at least one person qualified to comment on this work.

UNIQUE: Please describe what is the most unique and the most challenging about the conservation/GIS work that you do:
In this section, please tell us about the most exciting and the most difficult parts of your work. You can tell us about the obstacles you’re having in running your GIS projects. Also, please tell us anything you want about uniqueness of the area where you work – remember, your reviewers may not be aware about the beauty of the region you are from, and about the threats to this region.

PLAN: Please provide a 1-year plan for how you hope to apply the skills you will learn under the SCGIS scholarship, and what you expect to be able to achieve in your conservation GIS work over the next year:
This is a very important part! Your plan for future work is the key for application reviewers to know what outreach the SCGIS Scholarship Program may expect, and what research or action the Scholarship Program is going to be contributing to. You are not restricted to one year, please feel free to provide a longer term plan if you can.

If you received the SCGIS Scholarship Award before, please fill in this section, otherwise skip. Our requirements to returning scholars are stricter compared to first-time applicants. We need a strong justification to provide an award to somebody who received it before. Please use this section to tell us about your work since your last visit. While, of course, we would like to see certain progress and achievements, please do not hesitate to tell us about difficulties that may have prevented you from accomplishing something. We need to know about your problems to understand your need for help!
Please remember that the scholarship applications are reviewed by a panel of reviewers, and even though you might have updated some members of the SCGIS International Program, it is a good idea to use this section to provide a detailed report for the reviewers who are not familiar with your work.

RETURNING SCHOLARS: Please provide a report about your progress and achievements since your last visit:

SUMMARY: Please provide an executive summary of your request, and include any special statements about your work that you would like to make at this time:
Please summarize your request in this section. Also, feel free to include any comments or statements that you did not find an appropriate section for!