The Minding Our Bodies project developed a toolkit and one-day training session intended to aid organizations in planning and implementing a physical activity program for people with mental illness. The toolkit was piloted in six communities in Ontario, from May to October 2009.

Staff and volunteers from the pilot sites attended a one-day training session in April 2009. From May through October, the pilot organizations were responsible for planning, implementing and evaluating new physical activity programs for people with serious mental illness. The purpose of the pilot phase was to assess the strengths of the Minding Our Bodies toolkit and training session and to identify gaps and areas for improvement.

The toolkit was released in March 2010. The pilot programs are showcased in the Program Directory and serve as examples for other organizations that want to use the toolkit.

Pilot Site Selection

The Canadian Mental Health Association, Ontario wishes to thank all of the organizations who submitted an application to become a Minding Our Bodies pilot site. We received more than 20 unique proposals to develop physical activity programs for people with mental illness. We were excited and encouraged to see many of those applicants reach out into their communities to create partnerships with other organizations for the benefit of the consumers they support.

Three applicants were selected to receive seed funding of up to $7,500 to develop and deliver a physical activity program. We also invited three other organizations that applied for support to participate in the training and pilot program, but without funding from the Minding Our Bodies project. Together, these six organizations helped us to evaluate the effectiveness of the resources we created.

To ensure that the toolkit will be effective in addressing the barriers and needs of various organizations in both urban and rural settings, the pilot sites represented a diverse cross-section of service providers. They differed in geography, population served, and size and type of organization, as well as in their proposed physical activity programs.

The three organizations that received funding as Minding Our Bodies pilot sites are the Gerstein Crisis Centre in Toronto; Canadian Mental Health Association, Thunder Bay Branch; and Haldimand-Norfolk Resource Centre, with sites in Simcoe and Dunnville. The three additional pilot sites are Search Community Mental Health Services, in Strathroy; Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto; and Community Resource Connections of Toronto.

For more information about the pilot organizations, see the April 2009 issue of the Minding Our Bodies Newsletter.

Congratulations to all of the organizations who were selected to become Minding Our Bodies pilots!