The City of Vancouver is seeking proposals for the 2021 Indigenous Healing and Wellness (IH&W) grant stream to fund programs that provide traditional, spiritual and cultural healing, and wellness activities to Vancouver’s urban Indigenous community, with a particular focus on services in the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood.

In 2017, the City established the Indigenous Healing and Wellness Grants program with the objective of increasing access to the counsel of Elders and Indigenous traditional, cultural, and spiritual supports and services in the Downtown Eastside (DTES).

The goals of the IH&W grants are to:

• Increase access to Elder services and Indigenous traditional, cultural, and spiritual services, with a particular focus on services offered in the DTES;
• Improve integration of Elder services and Indigenous healing and wellness activities into mainstream health services; and,
• Improve health and wellbeing outcomes.

Type of Program

• Provide Indigenous cultural/spiritual knowledge unique to the client’s culture and spirituality;
• Provide guidance, cultural and spiritual support through, e.g., one-to-one sessions, group work, sharing circles, healing circles;
• Share cultural knowledge and expertise through activities such as drum making, art, carving, crafts, storytelling, talking circles, history lessons, nature walks, traditional drumming and singing; OR,
• Share spiritual knowledge and expertise through activities and ceremonies such as welcoming, opening and closing prayers, smudging, brushing off, sweat lodge, medicine picking and other traditional practices.

Funding Information

• Maximum Grant Amount per Program: $20,000.
• The program for which funding is being sought must have been in existence for a minimum of 18 months prior to the application.

Eligibility Criteria

To be eligible for this grant, organizations must meet all of the following criteria:

• Must be at least one of the following:
  • Registered non-profit society
  • Community service co-op
  • Social enterprise wholly owned by a non-profit, and in good standing with the Registrar of Companies
  • Registered charity with the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA)
  • First Nations band
• Must have an independent, active governing body composed of volunteers. The by-laws must have provisions that no Board director can be remunerated for being a director; staff members cannot be voting members of the Board or Executive;
• Must have the demonstrated functional capacity and sufficient resources to deliver the services and programs to which the City is being asked to contribute;
• Must demonstrate accommodation, welcomeness and openness to people of all ages, abilities, sexual orientation, gender identities (including trans*, gender-variant and two-spirit people), ethnicities, cultural backgrounds, religions, languages, under-represented communities and socio-economic conditions in its policies, practices and programs, except in instances where the exclusion of some group is required for another group to be effectively targeted;
• Must achieve a minimum of 1:1 leverage from other sources, which can include support from other funders and/or institutions, as well as staff time, space and material donated or provided by other organizations to support the project;
• The program for which funding is being sought must be located in Vancouver or, if not, must demonstrate it is primarily serving residents of Vancouver;
• A significant percentage of the people to be supported through the grant activities must be Indigenous.

For more information, visit Vancouver City Council.