Please note this granting stream is no longer accepting applications. Selected applicants announced here.
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.
Steps to Learn More and Apply
- Review the Move it! Exploring Active Communities Innovations: A Virtual Forum recording that took place on May 17, 2017. (Supporting resources and link are available below).
- Application materials – the full Active Communities Grant application guide is now available here. The application form is available here.
- Proposals will be accepted between May 10 – June 30, 2017. (Please note the application deadline has passed).
Application Guide
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A step-by-step guide for completing the grant application for the Active Communities grant application is available here.
Download the application guide.
More Information
The Opportunity |
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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:
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:
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 |
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Application |
Additional Supports for Communities
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:
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
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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. Agenda Download session descriptions and and speaker bios [pdf] Webinar Recording Move It Forum webinar recording is available here. [Adobe Connect] Presentations
Resources Dr. Kay Teschke, Building to make bicycling a transport option for women (and children)
Tim Schwantes, Active Living By Design, Where Do the Children Play?
Andrea Carey, Sport for Life Society, Making the Links: Improving Access & Inclusion for Physical Activity and Active Communities |
Questions about the Active Communities Grants?
Have a question? Visit the frequently asked questions page.
For more information about the PlanH Active Communities Grants for Island Health and Interior Health regions please contact: grants@planh.ca, (250) 590-8432.
The PlanH Active Communities grants are for local governments within the Interior Health and Island Health regions. If you are a local government outside of the PlanH Active Communities granting regions and want to find out about other active community grant opportunities in your area please read the deadlines and instructions on how to apply in each healthy authority region in this BC Government Feb. 17th news posting.
Resources
The following resources may be useful in developing ideas for your Active Communities grant submission:
- PlanH information and resources for local governments on Active Living
- BC Community Health Data
- BC Alliance for Healthy Living
- Physical Literacy for Communities