Fellowship Economic equity and parity

["Tracy F. Hackshaw (@ Google)" <tracyhackshaw@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,
As a current Fellow, I would like to advocate that two items be considered:

1. Due to the fact that Fellows are drawn from developing nations, it is
normally highly likely that citizens who are chosen as Fellows would
normally be required to obtain Visas for travel. More pertinently it also
highly likely that Fellows would encounter the problem where even if the
host country has an Embassy or Consulate in the home country (and this is
more infrequent than you might expect), it is usually not a Visa-issuing
office and we are required, at our expense, to pay for COURIER (nor regular
post) fees to shuttle the passport and requisite documents back and forth.

Additionally, with the increasing emergence of biometric-type Visa
applications, due to various Homeland Security concerns the cost of actually
getting the Visa increases astronomically and in direct proportion to your
Home Country's distance from the Host Country. When added to the actual Visa
processing fee, this can often come very close to swallowing the majority of
the current level of Stipend, which is paid, of course, much later - about
1-2 weeks after the END of the Meeting. This may place unnecessary hardship
and prove to be a stumbling block to those Fellows who are willing to travel
and participate, but for economic reasons, may not be able to frontload the
fees required to get to the Host Country.

2. It seems a bit unfortunate that Fellows have been
treated somewhat inequitably with respect to economic living conditions It
is curious that ICANN supports the issuance of stipends to Fellows as
opposed to per diem when they are expected to eat and live in (at a minimum)
the same economic conditions that other Travel Support constituencies
experience. Even more so, noting that Fellows, as stated above, are selected
from economically disadvantaged nations, and without prejudice to their own
economic circumstances. Is there any way that Fellows could be perceived
more favourably when considering the applicability of stipends vs per diem?
I would like to think that the Fellowship constituency would or should be
perceived at least on parity with many of the other groups given the
expectation that ICANN places on the Alumni upon completion of the
Programme.