The City of Charlottetown is chasing a $10-million prize all in the name of helping the mental health resiliency of its youth.
The city is submitting an entry into the Smart Cities Challenge with a focus on addressing social inclusion, improving access to services and increasing participation in relevant programming through the use of technology.
The challenge encourages communities to adopt a smart cities approach to improve the lives of their residents through innovation, data and connected technology. There are four final prizes – one prize of up to $50 million open to all communities, regardless of population; two prizes of up to $10 million open to all communities with populations under 500,000 people; and one prize up to $5 million open to all communities with population under 30,000 people.
Cities that are selected as finalists in the competition will receive a $250,000 grant to develop their complete proposal, which is due in the winter of 2018-19 with the competition winners being announced in the spring of 2019.
“Industry Canada came up with the program called Smart Cities Challenge and the challenge is for cities to come up with proposals to address social issues within their town using modern day technology,’’ said Deputy Mayor Mike Duffy, chairman of the sustainability committee.
“The City of Charlottetown has decided to embark on that competition and we’ll be taking the first steps which is to build a framework of providing a study or an in depth look at problems within the city and the one we’ve come up with is the mental health of the youth in the city.’’
Ramona Doyle, sustainability officer with the city, said they made the decision after receiving feedback from the community.
“We’re hearing more and more discussion about mental health and the impacts it has on our community and we see ourselves as being positioned to be able to help and contribute to making positive changes,’’ Doyle said.
She said right now they’re looking at how technology can help with initiatives.
“You could use technology in a way to connect people better to programming so it could be a way to use virtual support groups for youth, it could be data collection, that will really be what happens at this next phase,’’ Doyle said.
Some of the proposed initiatives included in the city’s application are established enhanced programming for youth involvement in activities that are anticipated to address the underlying causes of mental illness, such as employment opportunities and recreational activities, including physical fitness and social clubs.
It also includes providing access to technologies that support the journey to mental wellness.
Information will be collected through multiple channels, including existing studies and additional outreach activities such as social media to understand the potential underlying causes of mental stress in youth.
Another initiative would be to develop wearables that monitor and support physical activity, nutrition, sleep, opportunities for social inclusion, meditation and other forms of mental health prevention and treatment.
“We all have the same goals in mind such as decreasing substance abuse, increasing the physical health of youth (and) reducing suicide rates,’’ Duffy said.
The application with the initial concept is due by April 24 so feedback and input for the challenge will be accepted by email at [email protected] until Friday, April 13 at 5 p.m.
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