Towards Making Academia and Researchers Competent Grant Proposal writers
Recognizing the lack of proper understanding and knowledge on grant proposal writing among the University’s academia and researchers , the Tropical and Infectious Diseases Research Center (TIDRC) organized training from March 03 -06,2015, in collaboration with the federal Management Institute to 24 academia and researchers represented from the 9 research centers and 15 departments of UoG.
After its establishment the Tropical and Infectious Diseases Research Center has been working to enhance the research practice in the University of Gondar. As part of these activities the TIDRC has been involved in different capacity building activities (human power development, infrastructure, materials, and implementation of effective working system—). The center has been conducting various problem solving research activities on different diseases portfolios. As part of its capacity building activities focusing on building the knowledge and skill of academia and researchers at University of Gondar, the TIDRC successfully conducted a “Grant Writing” training in collaboration with the federal Management Institute from March 03-06, 215 held in the College of Medicine and Health Sciences, UoG.
A grant proposal requests funding to support activities that are consistent with the mission of the grant agency and nature of the project. Identifying an appropriate potential grant maker can be one of the most challenging parts in the grant writing process. It is known that UoG has strong reputation in conducting different problem solving research activities in its 60 years long journey. However, the lion shares of such researches were funded by the limited research fund available from UoG. The TIDRC has evaluated and assessed this gap and contributing factors that influence academia and researchers not to be active participants in the international scientific competition for project grants. Lack of proper understanding and knowledge on how to develop a well designed research proposals capable to compete in international arena is the major gap. Therefore, the TIDRC has decided to fill some of this gaps through conducting a well designed standard “Grant Writing” training in collaboration with the federal Management Institute, which is a respected training institute having of ample experiences in providing capacity building trainings on grant writing and other areas in Ethiopia. Based on these facts the “Grant writing” training was given by a professional trainer came from the federal Management Institute to 24 academia and researchers represented from the 9 research centers and 15 departments from UoG.
During the end of the training the TIDRC tried to collect feedbacks and views about the training from all the trainees using two pages questionnaire. Based on the feedbacks obtained from the trainees, the center believes that the training has met its objective. Nonetheless, the center believes that full impact of the training will be evaluated in the future when the trainees start to participate in local and international grant competition, and perhaps win grants. Strong follow-up and support should be given from the concerned bodies and offices to support and follow the move of the trainees to transform the Knowledge gained into actual practice.
Reported by Ebba Abate (PhD)
Department of Immunology and Molecular Biology
