
- 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.
* Equipment: Purchase physical activity equipment or create health-focused installations (permanent hopscotch, natural playscapes, etc.).
* Shade structures (physical or through tree canopy): Installing shade sails or pavilions over a playground or an outdoor fitness station to make it usable during hot weather. Planting trees along a walking path or around a community gathering space to create a cooler environment for exercise and recreation.
* 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, seating, and a robust set of shared gardening tools for a new, improved, or expanded community garden plot at a school or organization. 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 or staff time to create and implement a comprehensive tobacco-free policy for a multi-family housing complex or a worksite. The remainder covers the cost of professional, durable signage to enforce the policy consistently across the property.
* Youth Advocacy Training: Start a school local youth tobacco prevention group and fund program supplies, teacher champion staff time, tobacco education materials and models, and a youth ambassador training summit 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 and market a recurring community clean-up of tobacco litter in a park or public space, using the event to raise awareness about tobacco’s health impacts 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, hospital-grade pump, small table, locking door sign, privacy screen). This makes a permanent space functional.
* Policy & Training: Fund staff time for development and implementation, including printing and distributing “Mother-Friendly Workplace” policy templates to local businesses and hosting 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 consistently support new parents.
* PSE Focus: Creating permanent improvements to how communities access healthy food.
* Water Bottle Filling Station: Fund the purchase and installation of a durable, public water bottle filling station in a highly trafficked organization or school, promoting water consumption over sugary drinks.
*Worksite Wellness Policy Manual: Implement evidence-based policy tool kits, 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. https://www.dshs.texas.gov/community-worksite-wellness https://mhwcaustin.org/resources-for-workplace/
*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. https://www.fns.usda.gov/tn/wellness-policy/outreach-toolkit
https://sph.uth.edu/research/centers/dell/child-health-toolkits/child-nutrition-toolkit
*Food Pantry Infrastructure: Establish a food pantry, purchase durable, commercial-grade shelving or produce displays specifically designed to store and showcase fresh fruits and vegetables. This will encourage clients to distribute and consume more healthy foods.
ONLINE RESOURCES FOR PSE CHANGE
Examples of Past Mini-Grant Projects
Click on the organizations’ names to learn about their projects and get ideas for your projects!
Austin Achieve Public Schools (AAPS)
Project Name: Austin Achieve Let’s Get Moving!
Purchasing new indoor and outdoor play equipment to complement their physical education curriculum to promote healthy habits early in the development of their scholars.
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.
Friends of Grand Meadow Park
Project Name: Friends of Grand Meadow Park
Improving Grand Meadow park with logs for seating and play that gives community members and neighbors a place to be active, gather, and hold events.
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
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.
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 addition, they will develop a leadership manual and training for its new incoming church leaders, increasing sustainability of the health ministry programs.
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.
Windermere Elementary PFISD
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.