A/HRC/15/38 VII. Beneficiaries of the Fund 23. The criteria for the selection of beneficiaries have been established by the General Assembly as well as by the Secretary-General upon recommendations of the Board. The selection criteria are reflected in the application form that all candidates must complete. Over the years and given the changes in the mandate of the Fund, the application form has developed into a comprehensive yet simple document. The Board has sought to ensure that the form remains accessible for all applicants and easy to complete. Applicants can choose to submit the form in English, French or Spanish. 24. All applicants must be indigenous. Furthermore, they must attach to the application form a recommendation letter from the indigenous organization or community that they represent. This letter must be signed by the executive officer of the organization or the leader of the community. This requirement aims at preventing non-indigenous people and especially individuals that do not have the legitimate representation of their indigenous community to be selected for a grant. 25. The Board also seeks to ensure diversity among beneficiaries attending the sessions of the Expert Mechanism and the Permanent Forum. Indigenous organizations – which are allowed to submit only two grant applications each – are asked to nominate one man and one woman. As regards geographic representativeness, the number of countries from which the Fund received applications increased between 2005 and 2009 from 56 to 70, and the Board continuously encourages applications from regions, countries, organizations and communities that have been unrepresented. Age balance is also important for the Board when analysing applications. It aims to select both young and older participants, emphasizing the need to facilitate the transfer of skills between generations. 26. The Board selects both representatives who have never participated in a session of the Expert Mechanism or the Permanent Forum and representatives who have already participated and are developing specialized capacity and skills, thereby strengthening the group of experienced participants in the sessions. When taking decisions on travel grants to attend various meetings, the Board has taken into consideration the needs, agenda and substantive focus of the United Nations organ in question. In the past, the practice was that indigenous representatives were chosen to take part in the open-ended intersessional working group of the Commission of Human Rights to elaborate the draft declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, whereas indigenous representatives who had more limited international experience and intended to present broader issues would be granted financial assistance to attend the Working Group on Indigenous Populations. Indigenous representatives have been selected for grants in accordance to their expected substantive contribution to the meetings (as indicated in their application forms) that reflected the themes that were going to be discussed at the sessions. The profiles of the grantees have therefore differed from session to session and from organ to organ. 27. These considerations continue to be true for the selection of grantees to attend the Permanent Forum and the Expert Mechanism. The Board of Trustees tries to identify beneficiaries of the Fund who could effectively contribute to the thematic agenda of the Expert Mechanism and the issues within the mandate of the Permanent Forum. 28. In addition to participating effectively in the sessions of the Permanent Forum or Expert Mechanism, beneficiaries of the Fund commit themselves to organizing follow-up work in their communities and reporting to the Fund’s secretariat. The beneficiaries of a travel grant are requested to conduct at least one awareness-raising meeting in their local communities about the issues, proceedings and decisions of the international meeting they have attended. 7