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. 2024 Apr 11;24(1):1011.
doi: 10.1186/s12889-024-18531-9.

Promoting children's health through community-led street interventions: analyzing sustained voluntarism in Canadian School Streets

Carise M Thompson  1 , Patricia A Collins  2 , Katherine L Frohlich  3   4
Affiliations

Promoting children's health through community-led street interventions: analyzing sustained voluntarism in Canadian School Streets

Carise M Thompson et al. BMC Public Health. .

Abstract

Background: Active School Travel (AST) initiatives align with the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, which calls for 'creating supportive environments' and 'strengthening community action.' However, their reliance on volunteers poses sustainability challenges. The main objectives of this study were to document the motivations, satisfaction, and experiences of volunteers involved in sustaining two AST initiatives in Ontario for an entire school year.

Methods: Two volunteer-led School Street initiatives in Kingston, Ontario successfully operated during pick-up and drop-off times of each school day. The first initiative operated for the entire 2021-2022 school year, and the second operated for the entire 2022-2023 school year. These initiatives were the first of their kind in the province of Ontario, Canada. Volunteers from both sites (n = 56) participated in online surveys and their motivations, satisfaction, and experiences of their role were compared using the 2-sided Fisher's Exact Test.

Results: Over 80% of volunteers were highly motivated to promote safety and over 70% of volunteers were highly motivated to disrupt the status quo of unsupportive, car-centric urban environments by reimagining how streets can be used. By taking collective action to re-shape the environment around these public schools to support healthy, active living, our findings reveal that over 90% of volunteers were highly satisfied. Of the volunteers, 87% felt they contributed to child safety and 85% felt they had developed stronger community connections. They appreciated the short (i.e., 40 minute) time commitment of each shift, weekly email communications by the community organization leading the initiative, and the volunteer schedule. They also appreciated the positive social interactions during volunteer shifts, which they felt outweighed the minimal resistance they experienced.

Conclusions: This research demonstrates the importance of logistical, motivational, and social factors in recruiting and retaining volunteers for community-led School Streets. Our findings support appealing to prospective volunteers' influence in achieving School Street objectives (e.g., improved safety) in recruitment efforts, as well as highlighting School Streets' innovative approach. Communicating with volunteers throughout School Street planning and implementation processes and limiting traffic in the closed street zone (i.e., by excluding the school staff parking lot and private driveways from the scope) are additional recommendations based on the findings of this study.

Keywords: Active transport; Community health promotion; Healthy communities; Ottawa Charter; School Streets; Volunteers.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that while P.C. was a volunteer member of the organization responsible for implementing the School Streets at the time of School Street A’s implementation, the program was coordinated by the Chair of this organization. As such, P.C. had no responsibility for implementing either School Street A or B; their role was to evaluate these programs. At the time of the study, P.C. was also a parent of a child who attended the school where School Street A was implemented and had personal relationships with some of the volunteers for this initiative. To protect participants’ privacy, surveys were administered anonymously and participants were not asked demographic questions.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Topographic maps of School Street (A); and School Street (B) which operated for the duration of the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 school years, respectively
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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    1. Ontario Active School Travel. 2023 [Available from: https://ontarioactiveschooltravel.ca/.
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