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Finding Your Project Idea

It might seem counterintuitive, but small amounts of funding can be incredibly effective in supporting Policy, Systems, and Environmental (PSE) changes because these changes often involve strategic actions, advocacy, and building relationships, rather than large-scale construction or direct service delivery.
 
Here are examples tailored to the Austin Public Health Mini-Grant overview, focusing on how a $2,500 grant could foster sustainable PSE changes.
Want more guidance? The Minigrant team offers direct support. Email minigrant@austintexas.gov.

  • Active Living (Physical Activity)
  • Community Gardens
  • Tobacco-Free Living
  • Breastfeeding/Chestfeeding Support
  • Healthy Eating and Healthy Food Access

* PSE Focus: Improving infrastructure or policies that promote physical activity.

* Signage & Wayfinding: Purchase and install durable, weather-resistant directional signage for an existing community trail or park, clearly marking distances and linking to other active spaces. This low-cost investment encourages ongoing use and navigation.

* Community Input & Design: Host a series of facilitated community workshops to gather input on desired park improvements (e.g., adding benches, shaded areas, simple exercise stations). The funding covers facilitation, materials, and a small honorarium for community leaders, laying the groundwork for future park redesigns based on sustained community need.

* “Pop-Up” Bike Lanes/Walkability Audit: Fund temporary materials (cones, chalk) and community volunteer coordination for a “pop-up” bike lane or a neighborhood walkability audit, demonstrating demand and potential for permanent infrastructure changes to city planners.

* PSE Focus: Creating or expanding shared green spaces for food production and community engagement.

* Core Infrastructure Kit: Purchase and install durable raised garden beds, a rainwater harvesting barrel system, and a robust set of shared gardening tools for a new or expanded community garden plot at a school or faith community. This provides the essential, long-lasting physical foundation for years of gardening.

* Compost System: Invest in sturdy, multi-bin composting units for a community garden, promoting sustainable waste management and soil enrichment for ongoing garden productivity.

* Shared Shed/Storage: Purchase and assemble a small, secure shed for common garden tools and supplies, protecting assets and ensuring their availability for ongoing use by community members.

* PSE Focus: Implementing and enforcing policies that reduce tobacco use.

* Policy Development & Signage Package: Fund a consultant for a few hours to help a multi-family housing complex or a worksite draft and implement a comprehensive tobacco-free policy. The remainder covers the cost of professional, durable signage to enforce the policy consistently across the property.

* Youth Advocacy Training: Partner with a local youth group to fund a short series of workshops on youth advocacy against tobacco and e-cigarettes, empowering them to become ongoing champions for tobacco-free policies in their schools and community spaces.

* Clean-Up & Awareness Campaign: Organize a recurring community clean-up of tobacco litter in a park or public space, using the event to raise awareness about the health impacts of tobacco and advocate for stronger smoke-free policies.

* PSE Focus: Creating supportive environments and policies for breastfeeding/chestfeeding.

* Lactation Room “Kit”: Purchase essential, durable items for an existing unused space to be designated as a lactation room within a community center, faith organization, or small business (e.g., a comfortable chair, small table, locking door sign, privacy screen). This makes a permanent space functional.

* Policy Dissemination & Training: Fund the printing and distribution of “Mother-Friendly Workplace” policy templates to local businesses, and host a short workshop for HR professionals on implementing and sustaining these policies.

* Peer Support Group Materials: Provide ongoing training materials and resources for a volunteer-led breastfeeding/chestfeeding peer support group, ensuring the group can continue to operate and support new parents consistently.

* PSE Focus: Creating permanent improvements to how communities access healthy food.

* Food Pantry Infrastructure: For a food pantry, purchase durable, commercial-grade shelving or produce displays specifically designed to store and showcase fresh fruits and vegetables. This encourages increased distribution and consumption of healthy foods by clients.

* Worksite Wellness Policy Manual: Hire a graphic designer or writer to develop a professional, easy-to-implement healthy eating policy manual for local businesses, encouraging them to adopt and sustain practices like healthy meeting guidelines or vending machine standards.

* School Cafeteria Signage/Education: Create attractive, durable signage for a school cafeteria that highlights healthy food choices, portion sizes, or the benefits of water, providing ongoing visual reinforcement for students.

ONLINE RESOURCES FOR PSE CHANGE

What Works for Health, County Health Rankings

Find policies and programs that are a good fit for your community’s priorities

Read More

Action for PSE Change Tool, George Washington University Cancer Center

Provides tools and resources on the PSE approach and how to advance PSE
change efforts.

Read More

SNAP-Ed Toolkit

Find evidence-based physical activity & nutrition interventions.

Read More

Examples of Past Mini-Grant Projects

Click on the organizations’ names to learn about their projects and get ideas for your projects!

The Charlie Center

Project Name: The Charlie Center

Staffing the City of Austin shower trailer at The Charlie Center, allowing people experiencing homelessness to use showers on site and improve health, overall wellness, and dignity.

Linder Elementary AISD

Project Name: Healthy Bites

Growing their vegetable garden to focus on outdoor education, which provides hands-on science and social-and-emotional learning experiences for students along with their cooking classes

Mt. Zion Baptist Church

Project Name: Preparing for future leaders

Creating a lactation (breastfeeding) room to provide future little leaders a space to grow healthy. In addtion, they will develop a leadership manual and training for its new incoming church leaders, increasing sustainability of the
health ministry programs.

Communication Service for the Deaf, Inc.

Project Name: Windermere Eagle Oasis

Creating an oasis within Windermere Elementary’s building as a place where staff, students, and families can get a reprieve from daily challenges that the school day and life can bring.

NYOS Charter School. Inc.

Project Name: Not Your Ordinary School Garden

Establishing a multi-faceted gardening program for students with 12 raised garden beds that will provide opportunities for students’ hands-on learning, inquiry, observation and experimentation.

El Buen Samaritano Episcopal Mission

Project Name: La Casita Verde (The Little Greenhouse)

Bringing small production plots to supplement fresh produce for their food pantry and community plots with a focus on Latinos and low-income immigrant communities.

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