By: Zavi Swain – Project Manager, Strategic Grants
At the core of our grant-making practice at Community Action Initiative (CAI) is a community-engaged model that puts community members at the center of designing, selecting, and sustaining initiatives. Through this model, we seek to build shared power, trust, and collaboration, ensuring that the voices of those who are directly impacted by an issue are heard and prioritized.
Through democratizing the decision-making process, we work to not only fund initiatives that address real community needs but also co-create solutions with the people who understand these issues best.
What Does This Model Look Like in Practice?
I recently wrapped up the adjudication process for CAI’s Youth Wellness Grant and am deeply grateful for the many community members who played a part in the grant’s development, review, and decision-making processes. This new funding initiative supports community-based organizations to provide specialized bereavement care for youth impacted by toxic drug deaths in their families and communities.
This February, we awarded grants of $80,000 per year for a 3-year term to 12 organizations across BC, with funding provided by the Ministry of Health.
Step 1: Community Engagement: From the very beginning of grant development, we engaged community members to ensure that the grant’s focus reflected the true needs of the community, not assumptions from outside sources. The decision to focus on bereaved youth was developed through conversations with community members from CAI’s past Overdose Prevention and Education Network (OPEN), which included people with lived/living experience (PWLLE) of substance use, families, and representatives from community-based organizations. These community members spoke of the many losses in their communities and the ways they are seeing grief and trauma have lasting effects on youth mental health.
Step 2: Collaborative Design: To help define the scope of the Youth Wellness Grant, we convened a Community Advisory Committee over a 6-month period in 2024, which provided essential input on the focus, funding guidelines, and eligibility criteria. We prioritized the voices of those with lived experience—our committee members included youth and family members with experiences of loss, PWLLE, community service providers, Indigenous organizations, clinicians, and health researchers. Additionally, we reviewed findings from expert sources including the Representative for Children and Youth’s 2024 “Don’t Look Away” report, which highlights the need for better support systems for youth experiencing unresolved grief and trauma.
Step 3: Community-Engaged Decision-Making: For the Youth Wellness Grant, we developed a multi-step review and adjudication process. The application process was highly competitive, with over 60 organizations across BC applying for support. To ensure a comprehensive and fair evaluation, we invited 16 peer reviewers to read and assess the full applications. These reviewers came from a variety of sectors, including youth and family services, health research institutions, counseling services, Indigenous organizations, health authorities, and other non-profits. They represented all regions in BC. In addition to their professional expertise, numerous reviewers also personally identified as PWLLE, youth, or caregivers and brought their lived experiences.
The peer reviewers evaluated applications based on several factors, including:
- quality of bereavement programming and services
- budget
- and alignment with funding priorities, with consideration of underserved youth populations and locations where service gaps exist.
In addition to the peer reviewers, we also conducted a special review call with youth to gather their perspective on how well the proposed projects would support their peers and families. This youth input in particular emphasized the critical importance of peer supports.
At the end of the process, 12 organizations across BC were selected as grant recipients, to deliver impactful programming for bereaved youth and their families, including land-based activities, cultural healing, expressive arts therapies, family-centred activities, and peer supports. Youth engagement is at the heart of each organization’s project, with youth in program advisory and peer leadership roles.
CAI is committed to working with you to build long-term capacity: I wrote this blog post because I believe in the community-engaged grant model we have developed over the last decade. All of us at CAI believe that by centering the voices of those directly impacted, we can ensure that funding decisions reflect real, urgent needs. This approach is a critical step toward creating sustainable change in communities affected by complex issues. Thank you to all of our community partners and our funder for being part of this important process.