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Global Solvers Accelerator
Connecting grassroots experiences, empowering social impact practitioners, and unleashing transformative change! The Global Solvers Accelerator is a peer-to-peer learning platform that unites emerging social entrepreneurs from around the world, to nurture their leadership capacity, enhance their skills, strengthen their projects, and grow their impact in their local communities and beyond.
Turning Global Collaboration into Stronger Leadership & Stronger Projects
The Global Solvers Accelerator (GSA) is a ten-month leadership and peer-learning program for emerging changemakers aged 20-35, who are actively driving social impact in their communities. Each year, a cohort of 15–20 practitioners from around the world comes together to learn with and from one another while strengthening the social impact projects they are leading. The program combines online learning and dialogue with an in-person Global Solvers Co-Lab, creating a sustained learning journey rather than a one-time event. Participants engage through peer exchange, reflection, collaborative inquiry, project-based learning, and shared practice over 10 months.
GSA is not a typical accelerator focused primarily on growth, scaling, or performance. It is a deep-work, peer-learning space for practitioners navigating real tensions in their work. Participants bring unresolved questions, difficult decisions, and practical challenges from their projects into a community where learning is co-created through honest conversation, feedback, experimentation, and mutual support.
Guided by the Melton Foundation’s Global Citizenship Development Framework, the program engages participants in understanding social challenges across cultures, contexts, and systems –strengthening the ability to lead and to share leadership, and to build relationships with peers rooted in honesty, care, and radical trust.Through this process, they gain new perspectives on their work, refine the direction of their projects, and become part of a global community committed to social change.
Kickstart Your Application for the Global Solvers Accelerator
The application form is complex and takes time to complete. Use our Application Guide to prepare your submission!
Applications close on November 15, 2026.
GSA is built around a simple belief: when social impact leaders are supported, challenged, and connected, their projects and communities become stronger.
Each year, a cohort of social impact practitioners joins a global learning community where they can step back from the urgency of daily work, reflect critically on their leadership, approaches, and agency, and explore new ways to strengthen the social impact projects they already lead. Through peer learning, collaborative inquiry, deep reflection, and shared practice, participants gain new perspectives, practical tools, trusted relationships, and new possibilities for advancing their work.
Over the years, GSA has supported practitioners working across education, climate action, public health, civic engagement, livelihoods, disability inclusion, and other areas of social change. Many participants have expanded their projects, built new partnerships, influenced policy conversations, strengthened community-based organizations, and continued their leadership journeys through the Melton Foundation network.
Participants work together with emerging leaders from across the globe to re-engineer community projects and amplify their impact!
Program Details
From challenge to progress: participants find inspiration and support to move forward
Over ten months, participants work through hands-on modules, practical methods, and creative assignments – learning as much from each other, trainers, and mentors as from the program resources themselves. The result builds at three levels:
- For the person: you grow how you lead, and how you share that leadership with others.
- For the project: the work you’re already doing gets sharper, stronger, and more resilient.
- Across communities: as participants from very different contexts learn from one another, local solutions cross-pollinate, and ideas that worked in one place take root in another.
Who Thrives in GSA?
The Global Solvers Accelerator is for people already working on social, economic, and environmental challenges: grassroots activists, social entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, SDG practitioners, action researchers, community organizers, and more. What matters isn’t a person’s title; it’s that they’re already running, co-leading, or actively shaping a project, and want to deepen both the work and themselves.
With that in mind, well-suited candidates:
* are between 20 and 35 years old;
* are actively involved in an ongoing project, enterprise, research effort, movement, or community initiative tied to the SDGs – and can influence the decisions within it;
* have a track record of real social impact;
* want to connect globally, advance sustainable development, and help transform society;
* are curious, open-minded, and forward-thinking team players who are at ease working with people from different cultures, backgrounds, and identities – online and in person;
* bring a sharing mindset and a readiness to learn, unlearn, and relearn with peers worldwide;
* have sufficient English language skills to take full part in every aspect of the program;
* can commit roughly 4 hours per week to the program, including online engagement, regular meet-ups, and project-based assignments;
* can attend the week-long Global Solvers Co-Lab (3–10 July 2027, in Germany, fully funded);
* are eager to draw on the Melton Foundation’s global network to strengthen impact and practice global citizenship in local communities.
Beyond the checklist, this program is for people who want to move past showcasing their project and dig into the questions beneath it; who let the process challenge and change them as much as they hope to challenge and change the world around them. It isn’t only about what participants have already achieved; it’s about the mindset they bring: participants show up consistently and authentically, ready to question their own work and to give to the learning community as much as they take from it.
Much of the program is cross-cultural and cross-sector, so it asks for openness, curiosity, and a genuine willingness to learn alongside people from diverse backgrounds, identities, and realities.
ℹ️ At the Global Solvers Accelerator, everyone contributes – also financially. Participants pay a program fee of USD 900 (scholarships of up to 80% available, payable only when selected into the program). These fees strengthen the program and seed a shared GSA Fund, awarded to participant projects towards the end of the program.
Application Process & Program Schedule:
Global Solvers Accelerator 2027 applications are now open!
If you’re passionate about driving impact in your community and beyond, this is your chance to join a transformative journey.
Application
Application Window: 15th August– 15th November 2026
The application form is complex and takes time to complete. Use our Application Guide to prepare your submission!
Please note: While AI tools such as ChatGPT can help polish language in a final draft for submission, we strongly advise against using them to generate or draft your application entirely. We value your authenticity, and purely AI-generated applications will likely be eliminated during the selection process.
Selection
Submitting your application form by the deadline means that you will join the global pool of applicants for the 2027 Global Solvers Accelerator.
The selection process spans multiple evaluation stages.
If your application advances to the vetting stage, we’ll reach out to your two references in early December 2026 for a letter of recommendation – make sure to give them a heads-up now that they may hear from us. Shortlisted candidates will then be invited to a 120-minute virtual assessment center, scheduled for 30 January 2027.
(Make sure to check your spam folders regularly – it has happened that promising candidates could not participate further because they did not see the email on time.)
Program Fees & Scholarships
At the Global Solvers Accelerator, everyone contributes – also financially. The program fee is 900 USD, which you will need to pay only if selected for the program. Scholarships covering 20%, 50%, or 80% of the program fee are available to participants with proven need.
If required, you must request a scholarship as part of your application form.
Onboarding
Selected participants will begin their Global Solvers Accelerator journey in March 2027.
They will connect to our virtual collaboration platform and handle key logistical arrangements for their participation in the Co-Lab later that year.
Program
Online GSA Program: 1st April – 30th November 2027
The core phase of the Global Solvers Accelerator, featuring deep engagement, learning, and collaboration.
In-person Co-Lab: 3 – 10 July 2027, in Germany (tentative dates)
A milestone moment for participants to come together, share progress, and co-create in person
Melton Senior Fellowship
Senior Fellow Orientation: December 2027 (Tentative)
Participants who successfully complete the program will be formally inducted into the lifelong Melton Senior Fellowship during this final orientation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Benefits of joining the program
By joining the Global Solvers Accelerator, participants stand to gain valuable competencies, insights, connections, and more! A program fee ensures accountability among participants and creates valuable program incentives.
Here are some key benefits of becoming a part of the program:
What The 2025 Cohort Experienced
The GSA brings together practitioners from different backgrounds, sectors, and regions to learn across differences and strengthen the work they are already leading. The 2025 cohort drew on a global pool of 660 applications from 74 countries, spanning every sector and all 17 SDGs. From these, the program selected 20 participants representing 18 nationalities across every continent, a range of SDG priorities, and diverse personal and professional backgrounds.
Participation averaged 85% across the ten-month program, which is a strong rate for a mostly online cohort of people balancing demanding work and busy lives. By the end of the program, 94% of participants had become more intentional about how they collaborate and build partnerships, and 91% reported a strong sense of trust and belonging within the Melton Foundation community. Every participant reported that the program strengthened their project.
These figures reflect what the GSA sets out to do. Every participant reported that the program strengthened their project, while also building the relationships and perspectives they carry back into their own work.
→ Read the full 2025 GSA Impact Report for more.
Meet The 2026 GSA Cohort
Francisca Koppmann
Sandeep Bokhoree
Yashaswini Nand
Inares Kenne Tsangue
Joyce Yetsa Amable
Pavan Vyas
Sharon Muzaki
Omer Malikyar
Karla Alfaro
Maddox Guerilla
Phakhinda Khanthavilay
Wenji Sanchez
María del Pilar Aristizábal Pineda
Michelle Valentine Aluoch
Janina Happ
Noel Ifeanyi Alumona
Ifunanya Uyanwune
Where Collaboration Meets Impact
The Global Solvers Co-Lab is the program’s in-person highlight: a fully funded, week-long Meet-Up where engaged participants connect in person, envision ways to collaborate deeply, share insights, expand their networks, and design pathways for transformative, innovative action.
Partners and Collaborators
Ernst Abbe Stiftung
Willy Brandt School of Public Policy
Melton Foundation Africa
Melton Stiftung Germany
Community of Practice
Upon completing the program, participants join the lifelong Melton Senior Fellowship, a global network of 650+ Melton Fellows that offers support, mentoring, resources, learning, and collaboration to help them grow academically, personally, and professionally.
News from the Global Solvers Accelerator
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- Melton Grant Opportunities
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The Global Solvers Accelerator is a ten-month leadership and peer-learning journey that brings together social impact leaders from different contexts
From 6-12 July 2025, the Global Solvers Co-Lab (Co-Lab) brought young social change leaders from across the globe to Gotha
Join the Global Citizenship movement!
Whether as a participant in our program, a network partner, or supporter , we offer ample avenues for you to continue to be an integral member of our close knit community! Take a look at the various options open for engaging with us!