School Sustainability and Resilience Fund

The School Sustainability and Resilience Fund (SSRF) 2024 supports schools and early childhood education centres to carry out sustainability projects and prepare for the impacts of climate change and natural hazards.

The School Sustainability and Resilience Fund (SSRF) has been established by Bay of Plenty Regional Council (BOPRC) to raise awareness and understanding of climate change, resilience, hazards, and sustainability within our communities and/or to take action in these areas. The fund will provide support for educational institutions to setup projects related to climate change and hazards.

The SSR Fund opens for applications early in the year. Funding is allocated through participatory budgeting (voting) to determine which applications receive funding.

A total of approximately $35,000 is available to be allocated to the fund with a maximum of $5,000 able to be allocated per successful project. All applications that meet the eligibility criteria will be included in the voting process.

The Voting Process

All applications that have met the eligibility criteria will take part in the participatory budgeting process, which means the public will be able to vote for their preferred projects online at Participate BOPRC. There will be two voting rounds.

Round One

The first round will include all the eligible applications and will be open to the public to vote for their preferences. Each participant who votes will be able to allocate (vote) approximately $30,000 towards different applications on how they think the budget should be spent. Each project application will have a cost estimate associated with it. Each time the participant selects the ‘fund this’ button of an application, the cost of that item will be deducted from the participants budget.

Round Two 

The second round will involve the applications from the first round that were not successful (second chance opportunity). The second round will involve a youth panel from across our rohe who will vote with a second budget of approximately $10,000. This voting round will not be open to the public.

Contacting successful applicants

We will notify the successful applicants shortly after the voting process has closed. A report on the successful applicants will also be provided on the Participate website. The successful applicants will be provided with a funding agreement which will outline the terms and conditions for the funding