Plan Institute for Caring Citizenship / Tyze Personal Networks

Background

The PLAN Institute for Caring Citizenship was created in 1999 to disseminate the values and practices of the Planned Life Advocacy Network, which was co-founded in 1989 by Al Etmanski and Vickie Cammack to assist families with disabled children. PLAN Institute provides training, consultation, and research to a wide variety of groups and organizations in the citizen and public sectors, related to leadership development, caring citizenship, and social innovation.

Created by PLAN Institute in 2008, Tyze Personal Networks is an online support network with special features and security measures that make it useful for various groups of people – which could include relatives, friends, neighbours, and health or social services professionals – to share the responsibilities of caring for vulnerable and disabled individuals, as well as chronically ill or recovering patients.

Full Description

The Foundation’s grant will support the establishment of The Belonging Fund – a program offering subsidies to eligible charities that want to make Tyze Personal Networks available to those with disabilities or chronic illness, and caregivers. The entire grant will be used to underwrite the subsidies.

Organizations will be selected to participate in the Fund by a joint committee comprised of representatives from Tyze and the Foundation. Belonging Fund participants will receive:

• A subsidy of up to 80% for Tyze set up and services to a maximum of $28,000;
• A customized English language site hosted at a custom URL for the organization;
• Training for key personnel on how to use Tyze;
• Full access to online help resources for Tyze users; and
• Regular reports on usage patterns, including number of people served by the organization who have become Tyze users.