Alaska Mental Health Consumer Web

Meeting Report

SAMHSA Grant Workshop in Washington D.C. Hilton and Tower

On March 11, 1999

Dear Consumers: Forget about frozen Alaska money!

Go for the new Fed. Real Money. It is out there available and waiting for you!

Write SAMHSA Grant Proposals, Summary of Program Announcement and Guidance for Applicants are available by contacting Katsumi Kenaston at Alaska Mental Health Consumer Web, Inc. As long as we are dependent on someone else to get advocacy money, we will be not having self-empowerment to recover from mental illness.

True consumers! Rise up and be economically independent, every policy about us is decided without us when we do not have money to go to meetings.

About one dozen SAMHSA key speakers presented the programs. Over 400 administrators, care providers, professional consultants, consumers from various parts of the country packed into a large hall at the Washington Hilton and Tower on a snow storming Thursday of March 11, 1999. Most of attendees have or had at least one federal grant.

There, I was all alone from Alaska being a new kid on the block, in the very front row so busy absorbing as much as I could in a full long day of crammed schedules. The SAMHSA people literally brain stormed me. I talked with many all nighters just like me and some told me not to call them after midnight. In the afternoon, we were divided to smaller groups according to the kinds of grant proposals we wanted to write. There were many times and opportunities to ask individual questions to the SAMHSA grant reviewers

There are more than 50 kinds of grants available now.

I am attempting to obtain a Community Action Grant for Service Systems Change (in Cultural Competent Mental Health Services Delivery through the Internet).

The proposals go through two levels of peer review (consumers chosen by the SAMHSA office, with stipends, travel expenses). Then SAMHSA review teams, the Federal Protection Flag System (protection of consumer samples)

You are always welcome to call them collect.

If you have any comments and or questions, please email me at katsumi@akmhcweb.org.

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Last modified 12/5/98.