In February, Canadian Tire Corporation announced an additional $12 million commitment to Jumpstart’s Sport Relief Fund to help sport and recreation organizations build back sport and play in Canada.

Jumpstart conducted a State of Sport study via Ipsos, which revealed the pandemic has not only impacted current access to sport and play but has real long-term effects as well. As our community knows too well, Wheelchair Basketball Canada and the communities it serves have experienced the impact of the pandemic first-hand.

We are one of the lucky recipients to receive grant support through the last round of Jumpstart’s Sport Relief Fund. Jumpstart has now disbursed funding to more than 1,200 organizations across Canada through Jumpstart’s Sport Relief Fund. We are beyond grateful to receive this news and know the positive impact it will have on sport and recreation organizations, and ultimately, on kids across the country.

The COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted the wheelchair basketball community across the country as PSOs and clubs were forced to cancel all in-person programming for an entire season. The typical awareness and recruitment channels through rehabilitation centres were also stopped due to hospital protocols and facility access restrictions by outside members, creating a large gap of individuals moving through the rehabilitation system without being introduced to wheelchair basketball.

In March of 2021, WBC began holding town halls with clubs and PSOs to hear their biggest challenges and what areas WBC can support them in as we start transitioning to a post-pandemic world. Both the PSOs and clubs identified recruitment as one of their biggest challenges and that
they needed support in this area from WBC. It became clear that a shift towards a participant and disability-centered recruitment model is even more critical post-COVID-19 to ensure that we are engaging and reaching children and youth in a way that aligns with their lived experiences and fills the gaps in program participation that was created due to the pandemic.

From this, we developed the project “Bouncing Back – Recruitment and Participation in Wheelchair Basketball Post COVID-19”. This project will consist of four phases: an environmental scan, strategy formation, strategy implementation, and project evaluation. The funding we received through this grant will be utilized towards the first phase of this project – the environmental scan.

For more details on this project and its results, please continue to connect with us.