May 19, 2010

Our Vital Ideas grant program supports and recognizes high-impact not-for-profit organizations that are making outstanding contributions and looking to build on their success. The Toronto Community Foundation is pleased to announce the winners of our 2009/2010 Vital Ideas grants, funded through the Vital Toronto Fund.

Vital Ideas grants are capacity-building grants for use to increase the effectiveness of a program. The Community Foundation provides grants of up to $30,000 over one year for activities such as:

• Replication: Encouraging increased use of the Vital Idea by other organizations and/or neighbourhoods and setting the groundwork for the expansion required.
• Documentation: Ensuring that the beneficial impact of the Vital Idea is clearly understood.
• Promotion: Communicating the benefits of the Vital Idea among those who can use it or help support it to grow.

Please join us in congratulating the 2009/2010 Vital Ideas winners:

Arts for Children & Youth, Outreach Program
Arts for Children and Youth’s outreach program engages marginalized children and youth in hands-on school-based programming that includes dance, visual arts, drama, dub-poetry and music, in eight Toronto priority neighbourhoods. Since 2002 AFCY has reached over 40,000 marginalized children and youth exposing them annually to programs that are relevant and meaningful. With a Vital Ideas investment, AFCY will develop a state-of-the-art evaluation system that will enable them to tell the story of their impact to the public and funders and produce two practical arts educational tools that will be distributed to the wider community and arts education sectors.

Hospice Toronto, Creating Caring Communities
Only 16% of Canadians who die have access to or receive hospice palliative and quality end-of-life care services. However, funding of hospices has not increased, creating a significant resource gap in the healthcare system. Hospice Toronto helps to fill the gap by training teams of volunteers who provide in-home hospice palliative care and support to patients and their families for free. Hospice Toronto is building partnerships with community agencies in diverse neighbourhoods to recruit volunteers from specific ethno-cultural communities. The volunteers will be trained to provide palliative care and support to families in their own language and in culturally sensitive ways. With Vital Ideas funding, Hospice Toronto will engage new ethnic communities with the goal of developing special training that embrace the community’s specific cultural norms and practices.

John Howard Society of Toronto, Program for Transitional Housing
The chances of re-offending decrease by 70% if permanent housing and supports are made available to those in prison. John Howard Society has been working to make our community safer by supporting the rehabilitation and re-integration of those who have been in conflict with the law through their many programs. Their program at three court locations has resulted in 95% of participants not re-offending. Since 2006, the organization has housed 458 individuals with 83% of the people retaining their housing. Their drug treatment program has increased the success rate from 14.7% to 62%. With the Vital Idea investment, John Howard Society will undertake a cost-benefit analysis that will make the case for funding to expand their services and increase direct access to housing for those leaving incarceration, thereby decreasing the recidivism rate and helping individuals break the cycle of “crime-homelessness-crime”.

Learning Enrichment Foundation (LEF), Childcare Curriculum
Learning Enrichment Foundation offers programs to help people become valued contributors to the social and economic development in the Northwest area of Toronto. One of their many services is their childcare centres aimed at children and families that are in, or are vulnerable to, poverty. The curriculum they use integrates literacy and English as a Second Language learning, family supports, health and well-being, and learning through play. LEF's curriculum is working intentionally to improve the school-readiness among children. With a Vital Idea grant, their aim is to integrate their childcare curriculum and current measurements they use with those used by Mothercraft. These measurements will allow LEF to document how they can directly target areas where children continue to fall behind in the educational system.

Local Food Plus (LFP), Eating Our Way to a Better Environment
We are increasingly losing our ability to feed ourselves. If borders were to close, Toronto would have only three days worth of fresh food. Many Torontonians want to support local farmers, especially those who employ environmentally and socially sustainable practices, but they find it difficult to identify them in stores. Local Food Plus (LFP) certifies farmers who produce food in environmentally and socially responsible ways and links them with institutional purchasers. With the Vital Idea grant, LFP will launch a Toronto-wide campaign to encourage families to shift $10 of their weekly food purchases to support the environment and the local economy. This will result in reductions in greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to taking 915 cars off the road, and stimulating the creation of at least 100 jobs.

Maytree & Toronto City Summit Alliance, DiverseCity: The Greater Toronto Leadership Project
DiverseCity, a joint initiative of Maytree and the Toronto City Summit Alliance, aims to accelerate the social and economic prosperity of the Toronto region by ensuring our leadership leverages all of our assets and better reflects the racial and ethnic demographics of our population. Since launching in November 2008, DiverseCity has greatly expanded leadership opportunities in public, private, not-for-profit and political institutions. With a Vital Ideas investment in 2010, DiverseCity will be able to expand the reach of their key messages on the benefits of diversity in leadership by producing and sharing stories of leadership transformation and success.

Psychology Foundation of Canada, Diversity in Action, Scarborough
Research shows that certain conditions, combined with stressful migration experiences, increase the risk of mental health problems for immigrants, including children and youth. However, close to no culturally or linguistically appropriate mental health services were available for Scarborough newcomer families. A multi-sector partnership initiative, launched in 2006, worked to close that gap. The partnership project has changed the way Scarborough’s four children’s mental health centres view their role in a multi-cultural society, and has helped mainstream organizations adapt their practices, protocols and services for newcomers in Scarborough. The Vital Ideas grant will enable the 26 partners to promote and replicate this effective strategy to ensure mental health services are accessible to 73,245 newcomers in Scarborough.

The Stop Community Food Centre, The Community Food Centre Approach
The Stop Community Food Centre strives to increase access to healthy food in a manner that maintains dignity and builds community. Their services range from providing emergency food and promoting the skills and attitudes to grow, choose and prepare healthy food, to challenging inequality by engaging people to take action on systemic problems. With the opening of The Stop’s new The Green Barn facility has come an increase in their public profile. There has been a corresponding increase in interest from organizations wanting to see their work in action. The Vital Ideas grant will give The Stop the capacity to create a communications package for the promotion and replication of their effective approach. The communications strategy will help The Stop to kick start its plans for a larger-scale replication strategy.

More Information
Learn more about the Vital Ideas grant program ››