More from Sri Lanka

Greetings again. I drafted this blog post in the Doha airport (in Qatar) while returning to the United States from Sri Lanka.

Last week’s post contained information about the first 3 days of the AuthorAID workshop in Sri Lanka. Now I’ll tell you about the other 2 days.

The final 2 days of the workshop focused mainly on writing grant proposals. They also included information on related topics, such as writing progress reports.

The main co-facilitator for the 2 days was Dr. Shyam Mahakalanda, who has considerable experience with grants. He was a lively discussant, with many helpful suggestions.

Bernard Appiah, the AuthorAID graduate assistant, also was a co-facilitator. He has been a peer reviewer of grant proposals, and he gave an excellent talk providing advice from this perspective.

Near the end of the workshop, Dr. Mahakalanda presented a flow chart for applying for grants. The AuthorAID Resource Library now contains this flow chart (in two formats: Excel and PDF), Bernard’s presentation, and my presentations from the 2 days.

While in Sri Lanka, I also participated in an AuthorAID planning meeting and attended part of an INASP workshop on online journal publishing.

At this workshop, I gave 2 presentations: one on categories of journal submissions, and one on copyediting and proofreading. These presentations too are now in the AuthorAID Resource Library.

I enjoyed my visit to Sri Lanka—a beautiful country with friendly people. And I hope my work there was useful. But now I’m glad to be home.

Until next week —Barbara