WIC Special Project Grants

Fiscal Year 2005

Background

FNS awards WIC Special Project Grants to be used for "special State projects of regional or national significance to improve the services of the program." In order to meet the statutory objectives, Special Projects need to address issues of critical and timely importance to the WIC program. Furthermore, it is important that projects do not operate in isolation and that the results of the projects are widely disseminated to other State Agencies.

For the FY 2005 WIC Special Project Grant solicitation, FNS is designating a specific focus area for the grants with a range of possible projects. The grants will be awarded as cooperative agreements. Extensive dissemination of the results of successful projects is expected so that other State agencies will have the opportunity to replicate projects and/or learn from the results. The theme for the FY 2005 WIC Special Project full grant awards is "Revitalizing Quality Nutrition Services in WIC (RQNS)." Projects that will be considered will be proposals that address the focus area of participant counseling methods, with the specific goal of implementing and evaluating the effectiveness of participant counseling methods (i.e. client or family-centered, facilitated group discussion, motivational interviewing, etc.), regardless of the medium (i.e. face-to-face contact, phone, electronic, etc.) selected. The counseling methods used are expected to incorporate WIC appropriate health and nutrition-related educational messages and include the initiation and/or the maintenance of at least one nutrition-related behavior (i.e. making healthy food choices, choosing foods appropriately based on a participant's identified risk(s), increasing fruit and vegetable consumption, etc.) that is supported and used within the WIC Program. Proposals developed from funding under the FY 2004 WIC Special Project Grant Concept Paper awards automatically qualify under this theme.

In addition to the full grant awards for FY 2005, concept paper funding, also begun in FY 1999, will continue to be available in FY 2005 as well. Concept paper funding for FY 2005 will be used to develop a concept paper into a full grant proposal for the FY 2006 solicitation cycle. For the FY 2005 Concept Paper grants, the theme is "Revitalizing Quality Nutrition Services in WIC (RQNS) - Childhood Obesity Prevention - Fit WIC 2." The specific focus will be on projects that replicate and/or adapt FIT WIC materials and tangible outputs from the original 1999 Special Project Grants, and evaluate the effectiveness of those replicated and/or adapted materials in specific WIC settings (e.g. rural or urban) and/or WIC populations (e.g. Native Americans WIC participants, Hispanic WIC participants, etc.).

Timeline

Critical dates for the FY 2005 WIC Special Project Grants are as follows:

FY 2005 WIC Special Project Grant Application Package

• Application Package Cover Letter

• Full Grant Application

• Concept Paper Grant Application

WIC Special Project Grant Evaluation Resources

The following guides are provided to assist WIC State Agencies in developing the evaluation component of their proposals:

WIC Special Project Grants Evaluation Technical Assistance Guide: This guide was developed by KRA corporation in 1996 to assist WIC develop evaluation plans for their WIC Special Project Grant applications. The guide was designed to supplement the WIC Evaluation Resource Guide.

WIC Evaluation Resource Guide: This guide was developed by FNS staff in 1991 and is a more general WIC evaluation guide.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Lisa Johnson, Grants Management Division, via email at lisa.johnson@fns.usda.gov.

Last modified: 05/21/2009