Grant Writing and Proposal Development Training in Jamaica

In Jamaica, the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) is a statutory body under the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands. It is Jamaica’s chief agricultural extension and rural development agency. RADA’s Livestock unit is one of six subset units within the organization, which is staffed by livestock officers covering all 14 parishes in Jamaica. In late 2020, RADA’s Livestock Unit requested a F2F remote volunteer to equip its livestock extension officers with soft skills in grant proposal writing. Their plan is that once trained, these officers can support farmers and rural communities with accessing funds.

The chosen volunteer for this assignment was Leslie Harris Cosgrove, a vibrant, knowledgeable, and experienced grant proposal writing specialist. She is the founder & CEO of AMARANT Village, a global nonprofit dedicated to working with people to solve their own problems, and to build capacity within networks, communities, and villages around the globe by coordinating projects and programs focused on operational and financial sustainability. She has 30 years of international experience as a development professional and has successfully executed many major grant projects.

Leslie remotely volunteered with F2F between January 13th and 27th, 2021. During her assignment, she conducted five two-hour virtual grant writing and proposal development workshops via Zoom. Through these virtual training sessions, she educated the participants on grant proposal writing using interactive and participatory approaches that involved break-out rooms, homework assignments, live discussions, and pre- and post-training evaluations. She trained more than 140 people during these sessions, including agriculture extension officers, community development officials, farmer groups, university faculty, and other community-based organizations.

The pre- and post-assignment testing showed that participant knowledge increased from approximately 40% to 80% overall. At the end of the assignment the volunteer emphasized that no matter the level of experience or grant preparation knowledge, she could see that all the partakers increased their learning and understanding of the grant process. Finally, Leslie recommended that the host develops an information portal to continue the communication among all participants, that they share all resource materials and session recordings with all attendees and collaborate with other RADA units in training farmer groups on co-operative capacity building.

Through her hard work, Leslie strengthened the grant development skills of more than 140 participants and their understanding of how to access funding sources for livestock development. This will result in RADA’s staff being better prepared to request funds, develop projects, gather community-driven needs and solutions, and execute more readable reports and papers. Leslie’s knowledge and enthusiasm captured the attention of her audience. Maneifa Myles, one of the participants commented of the assignment: “The sessions were very informative and timely. The presenter was very well learned and gave feedback to questions in a language that was easily understood”.

Finally, Leslie herself commented: “Although I have served in numerous countries under the Farmer-to-Farmer program, Jamaica is my first service in the Caribbean. I am delighted to be able to find this new opportunity. This was also my first online-led training. I very much appreciated the support and technical expertise that the assignment team provided. As a result, I am pleased with this first initiative and look forward to future assignments to assist the people working within agriculture in Jamaica.”