Back from the Ethiopia Proposal-Writing Workshop

Greetings again. I’ve now returned from Addis Ababa, where I facilitated a workshop on writing proposals.

As hoped, the workshop attracted a diverse group: Attendees came from various parts of Ethiopia. They ranged from early-career researchers to senior administrators. And they came from a wide variety of academic fields.

The workshop, which lasted 4 days, was designed to help with all kinds of proposals (including those for research grants, training programs, and service projects). The main slides from the main presentations now appear in the AuthorAID Resource Library.

Workshop highlights included 2 guest presentations: The first morning, Prof. Asfawossen Asrat, from Addis Ababa University (AAU), discussed a type of grant given at AAU. Major concepts in this talk provided a good foundation for material later in the workshop.

The last day, Mr. Teklemichael (“Tekle”) Wordofa, from the AAU Libraries, spoke about electronic information resources for researchers in Ethiopia. Tekle, who is the INASP country coordinator in Ethiopia, had done much to organize the workshop.

I thank the organizers, supporters, and guest presenters. I also thank the co-facilitator: Prof. B. S. Chandravanshi, Department of Chemistry, AAU.

As is standard for AuthorAID, the workshop included small-group sessions. One small-group activity was to draft timelines for proposals. Another was to prepare a proposal for a 1-day workshop on proposal writing.

During the workshop, I learned that attendees also wanted train-the-trainer sessions. Therefore I added such sessions. I hope these sessions will help attendees to share what they gained from the workshop.

Wishing you a good week—

Barbara