Active Communities Grants for Local Governments in Island Health and Interior Health Regions

The Opportunity 

• Grants up to $30,000 for individual communities
• 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. 

Detailed Timeline

• May 10, 2017: Application guide and online application form available 
• May 17, 2017: Move it! Exploring Active Communities Innovations: A Virtual Forum (recording of event available here) 
• June 30, 2017: Deadline to apply (no longer accepting applications)
• August 4, 2017: Communities notified 
• October, 2018: All projects must be completed 

Application

• Read the application guide
• Complete the Active Communities grant application form

Active Communities Learning Network Webinars 

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! 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. 

Agenda

Download session descriptions and and speaker bios [pdf]

Webinar Recording

Move It Forum webinar recording is available here. [Adobe Connect]

Presentations

• Introduction to Active Communities Matt Herman, Executive Director of Healthy Living and Health Promotion, Ministry of Health
• Making the Links: Improving Access & Inclusion for Physical Activity and Active Communities Andrea Carey, Director of Operations and Special Projects, Sport for Life Society
• Active Community Design
  • Safe and Preferred Bicycle Lane Infrastructure, Kay Teschke, Cycling in Cities, UBC
  • Active Living By Design, Tim Schwantes, Active Living by Design, North Carolina
  • Age-Friendly Active Transportation Planning, Luke Sales, Director of Planning, Qualicum Beach
• Approaches to Collaboration and Collective Action
  • Collective Impact to Prevent and Reduce Childhood Obesity (Cheryl Moder, Vice President, Collective Impact, Community Health Improvement Partners, San Diego)

Resources

Dr. Kay Teschke, Building to make bicycling a transport option for women (and children)

• Cycling in Cities: Injury Route Risk & Route Infrastructure
• Cycling in Cities: Preferred Route Types

Tim Schwantes, Active Living By Design, Where Do the Children Play?

• activelivingbydesign.org
• Community action model
• ALBD blog articles on parks and playgrounds
• Healthi Kids, NY
• Playability Plans NY (8:21 min video)
• State of Play in Rochester NY
• Recreation on the Move NY
• El Camino Trail NY( 3:15 min video)
• Active Living by Design –  Rochester, NY
• Imagine Flint Adopt a Park Program, MI
• Sample Adopt a Park application, MI
• Active Living by Design Flint, MI
• Parks and Recreation Needs Assessment
• Sustainability Plan

Andrea Carey, Sport for Life Society, Making the Links: Improving Access & Inclusion for Physical Activity and Active Communities

• www.sportforlife.ca
• www.physicalliteracy.ca
• Vital Signs Sport and Belonging
• Engaging Women and Girls
• Aboriginal Sport for Life