A course I’m taking required me to write a fictional grant proposal. I wrote one to AIDS Vancouver Island and I decided it was interesting enough to share. I’ve already submitted it, so I’m not interested in critical feedback.

Introduction

The needles around St Andrew’s elementary school are left there by members of the street community. The ideal solution is for that community to deal with its own issues and act as “good neighbours”. I propose using grant money to create an incentive for the street community to clean the neighbourhood itself.

Many street people are self-employed as “binners”: they collect recyclables and return them for the items’ deposit. If used needles had similar value, street people would collect and return them. Employing marginalized people meets social goals beyond the immediate public health goal of this project. Engaging people close to the source of the problem will hopefully have lasting impact. This innovative approach will be well-received by the rest of the neighbourhood.

Body

Statement of work

A needle depot would be established that exchanges used needles for small amounts of cash. There is no way to specifically target needles in the St. Andrew’s neighbourhood, so effective use of funds would be ensured in two ways:

• placing the depot in the centre of the target area
• setting a needle value low enough to not compete with the city-wide needle exchange

The needle depot would be staffed, by volunteers if possible. The depot would operate out of a car, hopefully donated for the hours of use. The depot would open for a short period immediately before school hours.

Needle value can be set using a market mechanism based on random sampling of the neighbourhood. Needle value would be adjusted to keep the frequency below a target rate.

Plan

[boring bits deleted]

Budget

Assume the needle depot will be open two hours/day, six days/week. The worst-case scenario requires hiring staff rather than volunteers and renting a car: assume the combined resources will cost $25/hour. Add an extra hour per week for sampling. Administrative costs for one year are approximately $17,000.

The mobile needle exchange gives out approximately 900 needles per day and collects 350 returns. For estimation purposes, assume that the needle depot will collect the same number of needles as the exchange. Assume that valuing needles at $0.25 will provide enough incentive to collect needles locally but not compete with the needle exchange for city-wide collection. Total payment for needles will be approximately $27,000.

A conservative yearly budget estimate is $44,000.

Qualifications

The program would be managed by Jared who has post-secondary training and two years experience in business process development, and a personal interest in microeconomics.

Conclusion

The St Andrew’s neighbourhood should be cleaned up by members of that neighbourhood. A needle depot is based on a proven model for cleaning up recyclables. It creates a market for used needles and gives the street community an incentive to clean up while increasing social justice. This innovative project includes measures to ensure cost-effectiveness and budgetary control.