Relmagine West Shore Community Society Cover Letter

Re: ReImagine West Shore Community Society Grant-in-Aid Application for 2026

ReImagine West Shore is pleased to submit the attached Grant-in-Aid Application to the Town of View Royal together with our annual reporting for 2025.

We hope you will find our Grant Application Form to be in order and that you will accept our separate budget documents in lieu of completing the embedded form. Our Making Shift Happen (Dec 31/25) document shares our annual reporting for 2025 together with our plans for 2026. We believe this format will offer you a clearer picture of how our volunteer-run organization has operated over the past year and is building on that experience to fuel our community service work in 2026.

VOLUNTEER AND CITIZEN PARTICIPATION:

Volunteers form the backbone of ReImagine West Shore. Our non-profit society is led by a volunteer board of West Shore residents and we collaborate with other organizations, local governments and passionate individuals invested in building a sustainable West Shore. We work to engage as many View Royal residents as possible in our work as we endeavour to meet folks wherever they are at the intersection of our cost-of-living challenges and climate change. ReImagine’s volunteers invested almost 1,400 hours of their time in service to community.

This year we’re delivering even more practical solutions to help members of the public build knowledge and hands-on skills to save money while supporting the planet:

• FREE workshops which teach people how to cook with local in-season and affordable ingredients, grow and preserve their own food, or learn how to repair their own clothes. Our first workshop of 2026 (creating delicious vegetarian lentil stew) was full with a lengthy wait-list. Our Plan & Prepare Your Garden Workshop, held February 7/26 was also full. Gardening workshops slated for later in the spring with the Compost Education Centre already have dozens of people pre-registered. The interest in our practical programming continues to grow.
• FREE Events like our Repair Cafés, where we bring community handyfolk together with citizens who have basic household items in need of repair, are not only keeping waste out of the landfill, they are also building community connections. People gather together and have a chance to pause, enjoy a cup of tea and a snack and meet other community members in a welcoming space while they wait to be helped. Our September 2025 offering was our most successful yet and our first of the year is coming up on February 21st along with a Garden Swap & Shop to help folks prepare for the growing season while keeping more stuff out of the landfill!
• West Shore Seedy Saturday - our 3rd annual event is coming up on March 7th at Royal Bay Secondary School and continues to grow. It features plenty of terrific connections for community members interested in growing their own food and creating habitat for pollinators. We will also have expert speakers throughout the day and a student exhibition of food-related quilts fashioned from fabric scraps, yet another demonstration of how creativity can transform waste into useful and beautiful items.
• DIY DAY - This community event is a collaboration with the South Island Climate Action Network and intended to connect more West Shore residents with some of the practical DIY actions they can take to become more resourceful, save money, reduce waste, and live a more sustainable lives. We’ll showcase Repair, Recycling, Energy Conservation, DIY Emergency Preparedness, Growing Your Own Food, Sewing, and ways people can get involved with neighbourhood and park restoration efforts.
• West Shore Sunflower Challenge - last year, we put hundreds of tomato plants into the hands of West Shore residents to show them how easy it can be to grow your own food, even in small spaces. This year, we’re shifting gears to highlight the versatility of sunflowers and will be distributing hundreds of sunflower seedlings at DIY DAY and during other spring outreach pop-ups to enable people to take part in a friendly regional growing challenge to highlight how plants like sunflowers support pollinators, garden seed-saving, and produce edible petals and tasty seeds you can enjoy!

Our Making Shift Happen booklet provides a comprehensive look at what we have planned for 2026 and illustrates the effectiveness of our community outreach approach through the detailed reporting on our 2025 efforts.

Thank you for this opportunity to again apply for funding support through the Town of View Royal’s Grant-in-Aid Program.

If you have any questions or require further information/clarification, please reach out to me at 250.857.7821.

Kind regards,

Cindy Moyer President connect@reimagineus.ca