Foundry Wellness Program

B.2: Template Wellness Proposal

C.1: Template Session Plan

C.8: Sample Power To Be Staff and Participant Information Form

Print materials such as posters, one-pagers and handouts are a great way to promote wellness activities! Below you will find a variety of designed templates you are welcome to utilize if you find them helpful.

• Posters: COMING SOON!

Utilizing your centre social media channels is a great way to promote wellness activities! Below you will find a variety of designed templates you are welcome to utilize if you find them helpful.

• Wellness Activity List
• Why Wellness Activities?
• Wellness Weekly Forecast
• Wellness Weekly Forecast [Blank]
• Percentage Evaluations
• Wellness Activity [Blank + Image]

Utilizing your centre webpage on the foundrybc.ca site is a great way to promote wellness activities! Consider updating your Foundry centre’s webpage with upcoming wellness activities to promote participation.

To update your Foundry centre’s webpage on foundrybc.ca please contact your centre’s Communications support or Stefanie Costales (FCO Communications).

Why do centres need to track wellness activities?

The Morris Foundation (and others) provided funding for Foundry to explore how meaningful activities encourage youth to connect with each other and themselves. This project, also known as the “Wellness Program”, supports centres to offer different wellness activities to youth. As part of our proposal and agreement with the Morris Foundation, we are required to report on and evaluate the program. To streamline this process, we have integrated the tracking of activities funded by the Wellness Program in Toolbox within the groups function. Below, you will find detailed instructions for how to easily track these wellness activities in Toolbox. 

How do I track wellness activities in Groups?

Within the “Groups” function of Toolbox, there are several fields where you will enter information about the activity (see Figure 1 on next page). Please enter this information the way you normally would using the groups feature. There are two key differences for tracking wellness activities that are supported by the Wellness Program:

1. For Step of Care, select Active Engagement
2. Select the “Step Types” labelled Morris. This is how we will differentiate activities included in the Wellness Program from other centre activities (see Figure 1).
3. Please provide a brief description of the type of activity including details about the activity duration and location. For instance, “one-hour yin yoga session in the park next to the centre” or a “three-hour roundtrip hike on the Baden Powell Trail”. 

When should I track wellness activities under the Morris category?

Each time your centre offers wellness activities for young people and submit invoices under the Wellness Program, please track this under “Morris” in Toolbox using the Groups function. COVID-19 has caused challenges for offering in-person wellness programs and many centres have shifted to virtual programming for the summer months. At the request of the donor, exclusively virtual activities will not be covered by the Wellness Program funding. Some centers are proceeding with small group wellness activities offered in outdoor settings. These outdoor programs, like hiking and yoga, music jam sessions and art in the park can still access funding and will need to be tracked in Toolbox. Even if the activity is just offered for one individual (as opposed to a group), please continue to track this using the groups function for consistency.

How do you create and track groups in Toolbox?

If you would like a tutorial on how to create and track groups, you can check out the following resources:

•   Video tutorial for groups tracking

If you are unable to see the Groups tab when you log into Toolbox, it is because you have not been given permissions to access this feature. To get access to this feature, email: datamanger@foundrybc.ca.

For any evaluation related questions, please feel free to contact Research and Evaluation Associate, Krysta Gmitroski.

Current research:

• Research questions are being explored through program evaluation work.

Future research:

• We are exploring how physical activity programs can be used in a safe way to foster youth engagement and promote wellness considering current pandemic restrictions and post-pandemic recovery and health. 
• Our research will use different methods to gather knowledge. One approach that we will use is a visual research methodology called Photovoice to better understand youth needs. This work will be done collaboratively with diverse youth, service providers, and researchers. 

Updates will be posted here and Lead Agencies will be notified of future research projects. If you have questions, or ideas for new research projects please contact Skye Barbic or Krista Glowacki.

Some of the existing Wellness programs at Foundry are offered through community partnerships with organizations such as BC Parks Foundation (Healthy by Nature Initiative) and Power to Be. Our research team hopes to leverage these growing partnerships to optimize opportunity for co-design of methods to capture this innovation!

We believe there is the potential for research partnership opportunities. There are different ways of doing this, and one is through existing partnerships with the University of British Columbia (contact Skye Barbic or Krista Glowacki or future partnerships with Douglas College’s Research & Innovation Office (contact Jennifer Affolder)