Vote for your favourite project for Aviva funding

Children’s programs, skills training unemployed adults, palliative care services and funding for a wheelchair accessible bus were among the wish-lists from Niagara submitted to Aviva Community Fund this year.

Now, it’s up to residents from throughout Niagara to help those initiatives make it to the next step in the competition for funding grants from the charity.

Julia Oudeh, corporate responsibility consultant for Aviva Insurance who heads the company’s community fund program, said “five ideas that span across the Niagara Region” are part of this year’s competition, vying for up to $150,000 in funding to implement their idea within a twoyear period.

Local projects include a project by Rotary Club St. Catharines South to establish a Shania Kids Can Clubhouse in the city – an organization founded by country singer Shania Twain to assist children growing up facing economic and social hardship; a Theatre-inthe-Round for Kids program, proposed by the Yellow Door Project in Niagara-on-the-Lake; a Skills to Work program at the Niagara West Adult Learning Centre in Lincoln, designed to help people obtain the skills needed to return to work, a Tele-Visit Program proposed by West Niagara Palliative Care in Grimsby, providing a telephone visiting services to communities in west Niagara; and a wheelchair accessible bus for Person Centered Care in Fort Erie.

The competition is currently in the “voting phase” where people are invited to visit

www.avivacommunityfund.org and pick what they feel are the top projects.

“In order for all five of those ideas to receive funding, whether they become a winner or a finalist that receives $5,000, this is a time to really pull together as a community in the Niagara Region in general, and come together and vote for those ideas,” Oudeh said.

Details about each of the projects is available on the Aviva website

Oudeh said the projects are uniquely designed to meet the needs of the various communities where they were launched, but they also have a wide-reaching impact.

“Even if they are coming from Fort Erie or Grimsby, some of them are linking up with other organizations in the area. It’s a really good … call for action to have everyone vote for those ideas, which ever one is close to their hearts.”

Register website users are each given 18 votes they can use to support projects.

“That’s a great thing for people to know, that they don’t have to be pressured to just vote for one. They can spread the votes around.”

Since the Aviva Community Fund was launched in 2009, about $45,000 in funding benefitted projects in Niagara.