TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE

As Dr. Lombardo prepared outside grants, she developed skills in the process and these she shared with Italian Americans through workshops, technical assistance, writing seminars and providing vital information on outside funding.

Workshops in Grant Writing Guidance

In order to assist Italian American organizations in obtaining Federal funding for their programs, Lombardo sponsored "Grantsmanship Workshops." The workshops featured speakers and panelists that discussed eligibility requirements for Federal grants, and how to prepare successful proposals. While many organizations had excellent ideas about helping their communities and promoting their heritage, they often lacked the knowledge about sources of Federal funds that could enable them to execute their programs. The workshops helped put those organizations in contact with potential funding sources. Many of these workshops took place in Boston, New York, Washington, New Jersey and Chicago.

Reading Skills and Activities For the Italian American Parent Training Institutes

This monograph, that Lombardo developed and presented to teachers and parents was published by the ERIC Document Reproduction Series, provides activities parents can do with their children at all ages. Reading readiness develops the prerequisite language experiential skills and concepts that enable one to begin reading. Though usually applied to beginning reading, reading expectations and requirements expand as a child progresses through the grades, and there are new readiness requirements at every level.

Parents can contribute to this readiness for reading by developing their children's speaking and listening vocabulary, inquisitiveness for learning and ability to organize time and efforts.

Language Workshops' Guide on How to Introduce Italian Language in the Public Schools and Grant Writing

The identified needs of specific bilingual populations were the impetus behind the questions and issues raised in the institute on proposal writing. The main questions were how those populations and their needs could be better defined, how an appropriate and feasible educational program could be conceptualized and how that program could be translated into a fundable proposal consistent with Federal guidelines.

Specific questions included how to conduct a needs assessment, how to distinguish between supplanting and supplementing, how to obtain support services for bilingual programs, and how to elicit School Board support for a bilingual program proposal.

To answer these questions, the presenters structured a two-part Institute. The first part dealt simultaneously with the processes of conceptualizing a bilingual program and writing a fundable proposal. The second part dealt with ideas and suggestions, mostly in the form of checklists, intended to give assistance in initiating the proposal writing process and in evaluating both the process and its final product, i.e., the proposal.