Tag: grantwriting
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Keep the significance of grants like roots!
There is a part of a grant, more poignant to me these days. It’s the part that keeps me up every night. The part that keeps me restless. The part often hidden. The part that anchors me. The part too that absorbs everything and transports me to new heights. The part worthy of digging. The…
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Keep notes to Angi’s cervix or cervical cancer!
In a little over a year, now, our life as we knew it came tumbling down. We called her Angie or Angi and to know her was to know life. I am reminded again, that death should never have the final say. Not when those alive can continue the story of a live well lived.…
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Keep knowing what you will keep or legacy!
The news of the Queens death came to me yesterday in the middle of work. I paused to immediately reflect on the number 70 and the age 25. Here was a woman who ruled her land for over 70 years, a land she inherited at the age of 25. Legacies are built this way, young…
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Keep writing grants in service to others!
My son drew a picture of himself at school today. He was dressed in a blue cape and black pants. I asked if he was inspired by Sonic the Hedgehog given similarities in the shade of blue. He shared that it wasn’t but rather it was a picture of him with a cape full of…
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Keep your struggles.
I am always mesmerized by an interview Chinua Achebe gave on NPR back in 1988. In it he told a story about a tortoise and a leopard. The leopard meets the tortoise on a lonely stretch of road. He had been trying to catch the tortoise for a long time. Tortoise, being a trickster, always…
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Keep the public in public health or LIGHT!
Why do what we do? Why get in the game even if you don’t know how to play? My answer is simple. If your know your vision, nothing will ever get in your way. And my vision is bigger than me. What you think you see or know about what I do is only 30%.…
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Keep grants as stories with lessons from Lorraine Hansberry!
Of what use are grants? If you think about this deeply, you will discover that it’s use are infinite. Of course some use it for their research. Some to propel their careers. I have always believed they can be used to tell stories. I remember the very first grant I wrote over 14 years ago.…
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Keep beginnings of grants!
‘Like desire, language disrupts, refuses to be contained within boundaries.’ These opening lines of bell hooks essay on ‘Language’ in her book Teaching to Transgress is my muse for today. Not only for the meaning behind these words, but for the simplicity of the lines. I am in the final stages of prepping for my…
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Keep change at the last minute!
Change happens in the last minute. I saw it for myself tonight during a UFC fight. Champions are made at the last minute too. 56 seconds till the end. I am not a fan of UFC. Never actually watched a fight until tonight. Two Black men were fighting. One Nigerian, another a Jamaican-born, British guy.…
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Keep the gift of misery with grant writing
Grant writing is writing full of misery. Suffering, despair, anxiety, pain, torture, even hell. It has taken years to see that this too is a gift, not pleasure. But a gift. I am on a quest to understand the purpose of this misery and why it matters for writing your best grants. Not your most…
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Keep moving past your fears!
I met fear this past week. Danced around in its oasis. For once, it left me without words. Instead, the words were painstakingly put together as a grant. I spent this week writing what maybe the greatest grant ever written. I know I say this a lot. All my grants are like blue skies on…
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Keep at it, win or lose!
I had a conversation with my mother in-law yesterday. We were talking about work and why I keep getting carried away with one grant after the other. Most of them are also not successful. In other words, you may be carried away with work and still have nothing to show for it. I heard myself…
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