In a culmination of the program “Write for the Good” – a Workshop for writing winning proposals for fundraising; Bosconet held the second and third sessions between the 29th November, 2021 and the 4th December, 2021 at the Don Bosco Institute (DBI), Guwahati, Assam. Twenty staff from the 8 Program Development Offices (PDO’s) across the country completed participation in the effective and highly successful training program on the practical skills of proposal writing.

The first module of ‘ Write for the Good’, was held between the 07th and 09th October, 2021 at Pilar Centre, Goa and was received very well. One of the roles of BOSCONET, the network of Don Bosco Program Development Offices (PDOs) in India, is to enhance the capacity of its constituent partners in various domains of skills, consistently. To this effort, BOSCONET planned and executed this capacity-building program for the Don Bosco PDO staff entitled “Write for the Good” – a practical exercise-oriented workshop on how to write a winning fundraising proposal.

This was run as a sequel workshop with 3 sessions of three days each. During the six days of the second and third modules, the participants covered the following topics:

Stakeholder analysis and engagement strategies; the components of and how to develop a Logframe matrix; Various types of activity schedule; Monitoring and evaluation plan; Budget development and important considerations while preparing a budget; basics of Theory of Change (ToC), important issues in report writing. All of these topics were delivered as practical exercises and at the end of the six-day workshop, each group was able to develop a full proposal.

The program was felicitated by chief guests Fr.Benny, the Provincial Economer of Guwahati (ING), Fr. P.D.John – Director of DBI, Fr. Jayaprakash, Director of Bosco Reach Out ( BRO ) and Fr. Damien, Asst. Director of BRO. Fr. Santhanam.

The 3 modules of the ‘Write for the good capacity building program was designed and implemented solely by Mr. Louis Manohar, the National Coordinator of Don Bosco Network South Asia (DBNSA). The program was facilitated in a participatory and interactive manner and was appreciated and authenticated as an excellent training program in the evaluation by the participants. All the participants benefited and took home the skill set to write systematic and impactful proposals for fund mobilization. Our thanks to Mr. Louis Manohar for his professional and committed service to enhance the quality of the (DBNSA) staff from the 11 PDOs of South Asia.

The course was coordinated by Fr. Santhanam, Asst. Director, Bosconet and his team. Fr. Noel Madhichetty, Director, Don Bosco Network, was the Course Director and addressed the group through an online interaction.

The program was a complete success and the feedback was positive. Participants who successfully completed the three modules, were awarded with Course Completion Certificates that were handed out by the guests in attendance.

Some of the encouraging feedback that was given by the participants were:

– ” when I joined I was prepared to attend a theory session but now I feel confident to have acquired not only the knowledge but more the skill to develop a proposal.”
– ” proposal writing is not essentially table work but primarily field work with interaction with all the stakeholders.”
– “learnt the proper method of writing a winning proposal.”
– “the resource person was excellent… in knowledge of the subject, a good trainer, imparting skills & a mentor who accompanied us – which made a difference to our training.”