When I first started at HealthBridge in 1998, then called PATH, I worked on a project we called the Global Vitamin A Initiative. This is so long ago we have no record of it on our website. I don’t know if computers existed back then… I found this reference to it in a call for proposals we (PATH) released. The idea was that the successful applicants (there were about 10) were to add GVAI-supported vitamin A-focused interventions to their ongoing health interventions. It was expected that the $100,000 grants for vitamin A would leverage the existing health intervention to achieve greater impact than a standalone vitamin A intervention. I was a newbie at the time and didn’t appreciate what a great idea this was, but it grew on me over the years and I started looking for other opportunities to apply a similar model.

About 10 years ago I had the idea to apply it to nutrition-sensitive agriculture. That is, to provide supplementary funding to existing agriculture interventions to make them nutrition-sensitive, and thereby increase the likelihood that the intervention will actually have a positive health impact. I kept the idea in mind, but didn’t find a suitable funding source until last fall when, with partners from Groundswell and CENDA, I submitted a concept note to IDRC’s Cancoll program. It was a longshot, because there was only going to be one successful applicant, and with a $1 Million to be awarded there were bound to be many applicants. But we were one of four who were shortlisted! So we invested a few weeks in writing up the full proposal and were hopeful we would win.

Well, I was hoping that in this blog I would be writing to tell you that we won, but that is not the case. I don’t know who won, but it wasn’t us. This is disappointing as it may be another 10 years before I find a suitable donor that I can propose it to.

But making it even more disappointing is that this is the sixth proposal that I have submitted with CENDA all without success. Three times we were short-listed, but we have not won.

I don’t know why. Do I write mediocre proposals that are good enough to be shortlisted, but not good enough to win? Or the work I propose is too outside the mainstream? I don’t know. Overall my proposal writing success rate may be around 20%, which is probably about normal, but, man, is it ever frustrating to lose. Especially since CENDA is having funding troubles, as Bolivia seems to have fallen off all donors’ radars, and they are operating on a shoestring now. Anybody have a million dollars?