Deadline: 2-May-22
The Canadian Roots Exchange (CRE) is now inviting applications for its Large Project Stream to Indigenous non-profits and charities that seek to create impactful community change and increase the wellness, resiliency, and engagement of Indigenous youth.
Projects must be led by 3+ Indigenous youth (ages 15-29) who are meaningfully involved in project guidance, planning, implementation, and/or evaluation. Successful applicants must be either an incorporated organization or have a trustee in place to hold grant funds.
CREation is a multi-level funding program that will support strengths-based, community-focused, and youth-led projects taking place in communities across Canada. Groups are eligible to apply for funding to support community programs and projects while receiving innovative mentorship, training, and capacity-building opportunities.
Focus Areas
- Successful projects will fall within the following areas:
- Arts and Culture: Projects that increase access to arts, art-based workshops, cultural knowledge, traditions, and ceremony
- Innovation and Change: Projects will support youth groups in accessing capacity-building, knowledge mobilization, and funding resources. Projects will focus on innovating healthcare systems, developing solutions to infrastructure and resource challenges (such as access to clean water and sustainable food sources), and increasing access to technology.
- Intergenerational Relationship Building: Projects will engage multiple age groups and should help to enhance the sense of community (i.e. projects where youth participate in programs with Elders, families, adults, etc).
- Resiliency Building: Projects will focus on organizational development in Indigenous agencies. The intention of this focus area is to increase leadership, governance, capacity, and opportunity for Indigenous organizations to impact communities and systems. Projects can include organizational enhancements (i.e. training, website development, strategic plan development, consulting projects, purchase of supplies, etc).
- Youth and Community Wellness: Projects will focus on enhancing community wellness and can include one-off events or long-term programs and any type of programming related to wellness (i.e. workshops, teachings, gatherings).
Funding Information
- The Large Project Funding Stream will provide funding of up to $75,000.
Funding Stream Priorities
- There is a priority in this stream to support:
- Indigenous grassroots groups and collectives
- Groups that have experience running programming and projects, but are looking to scale to a new level or try something new
- Projects that have an appropriate in scale and scope for the funding provided (i.e. engagement numbers and frequency make sense for the funding requested)
- Projects that are multi-dimensional (i.e. are doing more than just one thing, and are looking to improve wellness overall)
Eligibility Criteria
- Funding in this stream is only open to incorporated/registered non-profit organizations and charities. CREation will prioritize funding Indigenous and youth-focused organizations. Projects must have a clear plan for how youth will lead and support projects (i.e. youth advisory, youth staff, etc)
- Please note: for the purpose of this program CRE defines Indigenous as status and non-status First Nation, Inuit, and Métis peoples in Canada, living both on and off-reserve.
- Eligible groups and projects include:
- Incorporated non-profit organizations
- Registered Charities
- Indigenous organizations
- Youth Councils (that are a part of an incorporated organization)
- Grassroots groups that have an incorporated organization that has agreed to trustee the project (please include a trustee letter as a part of your application)
- Ineligible groups and projects:
- Individuals
- Unincorporated and grassroots groups without a trustee
- Projects that are not youth-led (or where the majority of the leadership is 30+)
- Non-Indigenous organizations
- Projects taking place outside of Canada
- For-profit corporations
For more information, visit https://canadianroots.ca/programs/creation/