Category: Willow

Hello everyone! This is Willow, again. Working with Curamericas Global this summer has been a wonderful learning experience and has better prepared me for identifying funders and proposal writing withing my career. For the last half of our practicum, we were focusing on identifying potential funders for our proposal projects. My proposal project is focused on requesting funding to support and sustain Casas Maternas, or community birthing centers. These Casas Maternas are specifically located in the Western Highlands of Guatemala with intent to improve the maternal mortality rates of indigenous women in the region, where the maternal mortality rate is twice that of non-indigenous and is higher than the national average. These health centers have been built and managed by the community members themselves and their community partner (Curamericas Guatemala). This project has required me to create a full proposal and budget, which has provided me with some of the hands-on proposal experience that we had practiced in our core courses. As a whole, this practicum has taught me a great deal about the review and proposal process, allowing me the ability to go forth with experience translating important materials and creating a proposal and budget. Within these final weeks of practicum, my partner and I are working to polish our proposals for our respective funders and send them out for review!

-Willow

Hello! My name is Willow, and I am an MPH student in the Global Health concentration. Some of my primary public health interests are maternal and child health, women’s health, health equity, and LGBTQ+ health. For my practicum this summer I will be working with Curamericas Global, working on grant writing for one of their partnered maternal mortality projects. Curamericas Global is a community-centered organization that partners with underserved communities to make sustainable improvement in overall health and well-being. I have one partner who is also an MPH student working with me this summer named Alexandra! So far, we have been researching and reading about different models and methodologies like the CBIO methodology and Care Groups.

After this, we will begin shifting to looking at actual projects, literature reviews, and identifying possible donors for the grant proposal we must write. During this position, I look forward to reaching out to grant donors that I identified and improving my ability to create a full grant proposal, including a budget! These are tasks that I expect to have to complete in my career and I am excited to have the opportunity to apply these skills now!

-Willow