The Active Communities Grants are made available to local governments and their partners in the Island Health and Interior Health regions. Grants of up to $30,000 are available to individual communities. Combined grants of up to $100,000 are available to communities that are working together for greater impact in their region.
The Active Communities grants support innovative projects that work towards having a measurable impact on physical activity. Examples of initiatives the grants will support are:
Population level projects that address the underlying root causes of physical inactivity.
Projects that seek to remove barriers to physical activity for target populations or communities through improving access and inclusion, healthy community design, and/or healthy public policy.
Combined grants of up to $100,000 for communities working together for regional impact
Coaching grants valued at $5000 to support communities towards long-term measurable change on physical activity
Who is Eligible to Apply?
The lead applicant must be a local government from the Island Health or Interior Health regions. The following local government organizations are eligible to apply:
Municipality
Regional District
First Nation Band
First Nation Tribal Council
Métis Chartered Community
Building active communities cannot be achieved by any one organization or sector working alone. All applicants must demonstrate existing cross-sector relationships for improving physical activity. At a minimum, this collaboration must include an existing partnership between the local government and the regional health authority, and involvement of community stakeholders such as local non-governmental organizations.
Objectives
The purpose of the Active Communities Grants in the Island Health and Interior Health regions is to support local governments and their partners to:
1. ACT FOR IMPACT: Take upstream1 action to work towards measurable impact on physical activity, and improve opportunities for physical activity specifically through one or more of the following:
Improving access and/or inclusion for targeted populations or communities such as rural and remote communities, low-income families, children and youth, older adults and Aboriginal and First Nations peoples.
Healthy community design (e.g. integrating physical activity into the planning, engagement, and research of community design such as public parks, transportation networks, and public spaces)
Healthy public policy (e.g. integrating physical activity goals into an OCP, neighbourhood planning, or healthy community strategy development)
2. STRENGTHEN COLLABORATIVE LEADERSHIP ACROSS SECTORS: Strengthen multi-sector collaborations and shared leadership to increase physical activity, including partnerships between local governments, health authorities and other sectors to develop comprehensive strategies, integrated approaches and shared goals.
3. INNOVATE, EXPERIMENT & LEARN: Go beyond business as usual to work and take action together in new ways that address the underlying root causes of physical inactivity with a specific target population, community or region. Co-create active community ideas and solutions, test them out, evaluate, identify and share data and lessons learned.
Over the course of the grant cycle (August 2017 – October 2018) two webinars will be offered to the successful grant communities on topics of interest related to Active Communities.
These webinars will be an opportunity for grant recipients to learn more about innovative approaches to increasing physical activity and share learnings across communities.
Active Communities Coaching Grants
In order to support those communities or regions who are interested in utilizing their Active Communities grant and leveraging their project towards long-term measurable impact on physical activity, BC Healthy Communities is pleased to offer additional supports in the form of a coaching grant. Coaching support is valued at $5000 (in-kind) for three grant recipients in both Island and Interior Health regions (six total).
What is a Coaching grant?
Successful applicants that have been awarded a coaching grant will be matched with an experienced BC Healthy Communities coach to support them to accelerate their learning, strengthen collaboration, achieve greater impact on their Active Communities project, and ultimately work towards measurable change on physical activity in their community or region.
The focus of the coaching grant is to:
STRENGTHEN: Build stronger multi-sector collaborative tables around a particular issue or initiative resulting in increased trust, clarity and governance structures;
CLARIFY: Gain strategic clarity on the measurable impact collaboratives want to have and how they will work to achieve this;
ENHANCE IMPACT: Build the conditions (knowledge, skills, mindsets, and structures) needed to identify and act on root causes that influence systems change for active communities.
Prerequisites to Apply for a Coaching Grant
The coaching grant is specifically intended to support multi-sector collaboratives that are intending to begin long-term action that can affect significant impact on physical activity with measurable results. Some examples of long-term collaborative approaches that coaching can support groups to get ready for or embark on are Collective
Impact2 or Social Labs3. Applicants must demonstrate:
A multi-sector project leadership team is in place or under development;
Desire to engage in a long term systems change process that can address the root issues of physical inactivity in the community or region;
A commitment to work together to grow the capacity of the collective to provide shared leadership over a longer period of time;
Commitment to work with a coach over the period of one year.
Move it! Exploring Active Communities Innovations: A Virtual Forum
A web forum was held on May 17th, 2017 as part of the Active Communities grant application process. The forum can assist applicants from the Island Health and Interior Health regions to better understand the issues around lack of physical activity and to inspire ideas for innovative ways to support communities in becoming more active. Find the recording and related resouces in the section below.
Move It! Resources
Follow up materials from Move It! web forum held on May 17th, 2017 as part of the Active Communities grant application process can be found here.
For more information about the PlanH Active Communities Grants for Island Health and Interior Health regions please contact: grants@planh.ca, (250) 590-8432.
