Why would you give a fish to somebody and not teach them how to fish for themselves?” asks Doris Bunte, Chair of the Community Committee for Health Promotion.
A former public housing resident, and former CEO at the Boston Housing Authority, Bunte knows by experience that public housing residents do not have the resources and the contacts to bring financial funds and services to their developments. They may find themselves without the up-to-date experience, such as computer skills or budget management, needed to apply for grants opportunities.
“[And] because they don’t have the money from the grants, they don’t have the programs,” she explains. Therefore, Bunte is now working with Professor Patricia Hynes, director of the Community Linkage Program at the PHH-PRC to create a program they called ‘Knowledge is Power’ because according to Hynes the program is “a new avenue to empowerment through information and knowledge.”
They have designed KIP to train tenant task forces in leadership, grant writing and grant management skills. “If a community is not prepared, they cannot demystify grant proposals which can be arcane; therefore they cannot compete to win grants,” Hynes explains.
The program is aimed at helping tenant task forces to read, interpret, and respond to a grant proposal. Participants receive training on how to manage the grant, develop and oversee the budget and understand the responsibilities that follow once it’s accepted.
The training sessions are divided into four sessions:
1. Cultural Awareness, Leadership and Outreach, Legal Issues
2. Making Sense of a Request for Proposal; Writing a Response to an RFP; Creating a Budget.
3. Managing the Activities of the Grant; Evaluation Plan
4. Make Oral presentation of grant proposal; Submit for Funding.
At the end of 2007, Bunte and Hynes sent a letter with a checklist of potential training topics inviting all eligible tenant task forces of BHA family developments across the city of Boston. Of the 18 eligible task forces, 12 sent replies with suggested training topics. “Their responses have framed our training program,” adds Hynes. The curriculum was based on the responses received from the tenant task forces. The training sessions began in the summer of 2008. Three task forces were selected for the training program, and two completed it, among them Cathedral Task Force.
