Paul Fletcher of Aviva Canada

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Paul Fletcher: Aviva decided to launch the Aviva Community Fund Competition because we were looking for a way we could involve ourselves in communities across Canada. We’re very involved today as an insurance company if someone has a car accident or maybe a problem in their home, we’re very involved in helping them get back on their feet.

We also work with a number of local brokers who are very in touch with local communities, so we’re very involved already. We were looking for a way we could take that a step further and actively participate. So the idea of the competition was we get a chance to involve ourselves in many communities across Canada, but even better, we’ll have some winners where we can make a real tangible difference.

The competition started off as a voting competition. So someone would submit an idea and the challenge for the person who had the idea was to encourage as many people as possible to vote for it.If they had enough votes they would get through to a semi-final and then a final judging round. So really, the start point was a popularity contest; how good is your idea in your local community and how many of your friends, family and local people can you get to support your idea? We’ve had over two thousand ideas submitted. We’ve had over four hundred thousand people register their email so they can make votes. And that’s turned into over two million as well through the process. So that really shows that Canadians immobilize around great ideas and support their local communities.

So we had nine independent judges the twenty-five finalist ideas. The judges were looking for a number of things. The key thing though was the quality of impact that particular idea, once it was finished, would have on the local community. Was it a permanent idea? But really the key thing was will it make a big difference to that community? How important would it be? That was the main criteria. There were a few other things . . . quality of submission, a bit of creativity, can it actually be completed before the end of 2010?

But the main one as I say was what’s the difference this idea is going to make once it’s finished and built? Aviva is delighted and proud to be able to support eight ideas at the end of the day, which is absolutely fantastic. What we’ve been able to do is support four ideas who are looking for funds over $50,000. We’ve been able to support two that were looking for between $10,000 and $50,000, and another two smaller ideas that wher we’re supporting up to $10,000. And it’s been absolutely fantastic that we’ve been able to spread the half a million dollar prize fund all across Canada. We’re really delighted about that. For a full list of the winners, Visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/aviva/avivacommunityfund/prweb3486894.htm