Relections from the President
by Lynn Elwood
For this report we agreed to focus on the scientific and medical grants Barth Syndrome Foundation of Canada has funded. This year marks the 4th grant that we have been involved in funding. Since this is a significant portion of our expenditures and a very exciting part of our program, we wanted to provide a little more background.
Barth Syndrome Foundation of Canada participates in the Barth Syndrome Foundation grant program. Full information on the grant timeframes and application process, as well as the full set of grant recipients is available on the BSF website www.barthsyndrome.org. We are fortunate to be able to participate in this program because it is administered by our Scientific Director, Matt Toth and all applications through this program are looked at by independent reviewers and recommendations are made by the Scientific and Medical Advisory Board. Once we have heard reviews of all of the grant applications, the Canadian board of directors votes on which of the eligible grants (if any) we will participate in and what amount we will fund. (In addition to the scientific criteria, there is a specific list of agencies Canadian charities are permitted to fund for research).
Click here for a summary of the grants we have been involved in funding to date.
There have been some terrific advances in understanding Barth syndrome through these and other Barth Syndrome Foundation grants. We are happy to be able to participate in funding of some of these and expect to continue funding appropriate grants to qualifying agencies in future years.
One of our goals in the 2009 year is to promote the grant process to a greater number of Canadian groups so that we have a growing number of Canadian researchers applying for grants to assist in aspects of Barth syndrome discovery.
If you would like more information on the grant process please feel free to contact us.
