The Change Up Field Project

The Change-Up Field Project is committed to positively impacting the lives of individuals in our local community by enhancing existing facilities into safe spaces to further develop skills necessary for baseball and life.

On January 31st, 2020 the Vancouver Canadians Baseball Foundation in partnership with The Cape Group awarded the Change-Up Field Project grant to two deserving youth baseball organizations – Richmond City Baseball Association and Dunbar Little League.

Due to the impacts of COVID-19 on local baseball organizations, we paused the application process for The Change Up Field Project for the 2021 cycle as it is important for our community to directly impact from the upgrades made to these facilities. Applications for the Change Up Field Project 2022 cycle will be accepted in August 2021 (subject to change).

While we understand that many organizations are in need of support, we require that grant applicants meet the following criteria for eligibility:

The Change Up Field Project increases access for children and youth programs that focus on:

· Self-development of youth increasing the access to the sport of baseball

· Developing life skills of all those that have access to the facility

· Facility upgrades to allow for inclusion of all youth to utilize the space regardless of ability

· The Change Up Project proposals may include, but are not limited to:

· The building of new infrastructure benefitting the league and local community

· Improving existing spaces to increase programming capacity, overall usage, safety, accessibility and inclusiveness for all participants

The application process for the 2020-21 Change-Up Project cycle is currently closed.

Updates from the 2020 recipients of the Change Up Project grant:

Richmond City Baseball Association

Following receiving the Change-Up Project $50,000 grant, the City of Richmond installed full natural turf infields at Palmer Secondary School to the three main diamonds. These were previously used for fastball and the turf infields have made them more playable in rain and given true bounces for safer plays.

In order to have the greatest impact on all age groups that play with RCBA, portable mounds were also purchased allowing for the easy field conversions from U11 to U13 distances and are very consistent and require no maintenance compared to clay mounds.

Dunbar Little League

The summer of 2020 was supposed to look a lot different for Dunbar Little League as they were supposed to host the British Columbia Little League Provincials. At Memorial Park located in Dunbar, there was several upgrades that were needed to accommodate all the ages that play within League.

With the Change-Up Project grant, the playing surface on both the majors and minors fields will be improved to provide a safe environment for all athletes. In order to allow for a long training season for the teams, the batting cages located near the Major Field will also be seeing some upgrades with new lighting, wind screens and proper storage for field equipment to keep up the facility.