COMMUNITY IMPACT REPORT FOR LEADERSHIP
Your quarterly report on how our community investment and business are connected.
FREE PLAY FOR KIDS
MARCH 2022
Through 2021, we continued to elevate our community presence in fulfillment of our social purpose through an ever-expanding range of involvements—including more than 50 sponsorships and more than a dozen partnerships as well as our post-secondary scholarship programs, our COVID Community Roots grant program and our Built Together healthy communities grant program. We also achieved Caring Company accreditation in recognition of our commitment to our communities. As 2022 is well underway, we are expecting another extremely busy year.
COVID Community Roots Program extended As we are supporting access to healthy food, we are also going to support another great organization in 2022 called Free Play For Kids. Free Play For Kids is an Edmonton organization that provides free after-school access to sports for 4,000 kids in need. Free Play partners with highly vulnerable schools who support children who are refugees, newcomers or Indigenous youth who cannot afford the “pay to play” model of sports or the high cost of childcare. For 2022, we are sponsoring Free Play’s healthy snack program, to ensure that the children who participate in its programs have the food they need to grow and learn. Again this is a program that reinforces our focus on health equity.
One of the programs we put in place through the pandemic that was very well received was the Alberta Blue Cross® COVID Community Roots Program, which addressed the needs of rural and remote communities. Through this program, we awarded a total of $262,000 with funding from our community foundation for 59 diverse projects in rural and remote communities across Alberta—including initiatives supporting more than a dozen Indigenous communities across the province. In collaboration with our Corporate Communications department, we created an amazing video profiling some of the many worthwhile projects that were supported, which was shared on our social media profiles in December. This video may be viewed at https://vimeo. com/651693352/31d3c4b364.
While we concluded this program in mid-2021, we have recognized the continued impact the pandemic has had reaching into 2022. As such, we are excited to announce that we are bringing the program back in April 2022. We hope to support up to 50 more initiatives across the province that respond to the social, emotional, physical and mental effects that COVID-19 has created.
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COMMUNITY IMPACT REPORT
MARCH 2022
BUILT TOGETHER
healthy communities grant After suspending our popular healthy communities grant program in 2020 to reallocate funds to prioritize areas related to the pandemic, we were pleased to bring this program back in 2021 to promote wellness and active living across the province. As part of the relaunch, we also rebranded the Alberta Blue Cross Healthy Communities Grant Program as the Built Together program, which provided greater clarity of the program’s focus on funding active living infrastructure projects. Our Built Together program provides grants of $50,000 to support healthy living infrastructure projects across Alberta, ranging from outdoor adult gyms and playgrounds to skate and bike parks, walking paths and outdoor rinks. Over the last nine years, this program has supported more than 35 initiatives across the province with funding exceeding $1.8 million. While we had budgeted for four grants to be awarded in 2021, we were able to award five grants as we identified we had sufficient funds available.
As we promote this program, we have also produced video vignettes highlighting compelling impact stories from one of the projects we supported through the grant program, a skatepark in St. Paul. These videos may be viewed at https://vimeo. com/564832678/9985434879. We will open 2022 applications for the Built Together program in May.
We had a tremendous response to the Built Together program in 2021, receiving more than 100 applications from across Alberta. We awarded the following five very deserving projects: • In Calgary, we are providing a grant to the Forest Lawn Community Association for a collaborative outdoor park space and multi-use community hub development that includes a Reconciliation component. This is one of the most innovative projects we have seen so far. • In Edmonton, we are providing a grant to St. Anne School in north-central Edmonton. As you may be aware, playgrounds must be financed through fundraising activities and this school is in a lower income area where they have struggled to raise funds—as such in the 50 years this school has been operating they have never had a proper playground. • Our grant for secondary cities is going to the Prescott Learning Centre in Spruce Grove to build an inclusive playground. This is a kindergarten to grade nine school with over 800 students in a rapidly growing community whose students currently utilize an undeveloped green space during recess. • Our grant for Indigenous communities is going to the Elizabeth Metis Settlement in northeastern Alberta who will be using the funds to build a skate park for their youth. The community elders see a skate park as an important opportunity for connection and bonding for youth, especially as deaths in the community continue as a result of drug overdoses and alcohol abuse. • And our grant for rural communities is going to the community of Ryley in eastern Alberta, where the local school that was formerly a junior and senior high school has been changed to a kindergarten to grade nine school for the region and does not have any playground equipment for the kids.
Above top: Prescott learning centre in Spruce Grove. Middle: St Paul skate park. Below: Ryley School playground.
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COMMUNITY IMPACT REPORT
MARCH 2022
FOSTERING PHYSICAL ACTIVITY IN SCHOOLS This year we are pleased to continue our longstanding sponsorship of the AMA Youth Run Club in partnership with the Alberta Medical Association and EverActive Schools. The club focuses on encouraging children to get active
through a school-based, inclusive physical activity and healthy living program with hundreds of schools across the province—and upwards of 20,000 elementary-age children— participating. Last fall, we were pleased
to be invited to attend a Youth Run Club event at Kipohtakaw Education Centre on the Alexander First Nation, where our ever-popular mascot Big Blue was on hand to cheer on the children during the event.
FRESH ROUTES Promoting community wellness One of our ongoing sponsorships is a monthly public health talks series called What The Health in collaboration with the Royal Alexandra Hospital Foundation. Recent topics range from addressing sexual assault trauma to the stresses of parenting and being healthy regardless of body type. We are currently in discussion with the Calgary Health Trust regarding the potential for a comparable speaker series to be launched in Calgary in 2022. One of the silver linings of the pandemic has been that as these events have shifted to an online format, they attract broader participation from across Alberta. The sessions are also recorded and posted on Youtube and have seen over 100 playback views.
One of our new community involvements for 2022 is a sponsorship of Fresh Routes—a not-for-profit social enterprise in Calgary that provides dignified and affordable access to healthy food through community stops that focus on removing stigma, promoting dignity and offering culturally relevant food choices. As we expand upon our commitment to community investments in promoting diversity, equity and inclusion, we are placing a greater focus on promoting health equity and addressing determinants of health among high needs populations. Fresh Routes stops are located in the socioeconomically disadvantaged Forest Lawn, Hillhurst, Greenwood and Sunalta communities of Calgary, as well as on the Tsuu’tina, Siksika and Stony Nakoda Nations. Equitable access to healthy food is a key determinant for health, and the communities Fresh Routes supports are what are called ‘food deserts’, where residents’ access to affordable, healthy food options is restricted or nonexistent due to the absence of grocery stores within convenient traveling distance. Fresh Routes had expanded into Edmonton’s inner city prior to the pandemic but was forced to suspend its initiatives during the pandemic, so should Fresh Routes resume its Edmonton work as we emerge from the pandemic, we will also look at expanding our sponsorship.
®*The Blue Cross symbol and name are registered marks of the Canadian Association of Blue Cross Plans, an association of independent Blue Cross plans. Licensed to ABC Benefits Corporation for use in operating the Alberta Blue Cross Plan. ®† Blue Shield is a registered trade-mark of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. ABC 84158 2022/03
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