Faith Commuter Challenge

The 2019 Faith Commuter Challenge is:

• A week-long event that coincides with the National Environment & Commuter Challenge weeks (May 31 - June 9, 2019)
• A friendly competition between Canadian places of faith
• A celebration of active and sustainable transportation
• An fun and easy way to try different low carbon modes of how to get to worship
• Nationally hosted by Faith & the Common Good, through local partners

 
How it works:

• Register your faith community and yourself to participate in the challenge week. Encourage others to join. Scroll down to the bottom of this page for resources, including detailed registration instructions.
• Between May 31 and June 9, choose a day to leave your car behind when you travel to worship. Rideshare, take public transit, carpool, bike, or walk. Do whatever moves you!
• On that day, log in to track your trip to worship via the Commuter Challenge website. See your GHG emission reduction, calorie consumption, distance, and fuel cost savings.
• Check out which faith communities and cities have the highest percentage of healthy travelers.
• Join with faith communities across the country to acknowledge and celebrate with certificates, prizes, and fun events!

 
Suggestions for Getting Started:

• Talk to your faith community about joining the challenge (May 31-June 9, 2019) to demonstrate your care for creation.
• Choose a Champion or Team who will plan and coordinate your event(s). These events may include:
  • Carpooling, launching a ride-share program in your faith community, or riding the bus together
  • Hosting a bicycle tune-up station, distributing bike maps
  • A special blessing ceremony, prayers, or acknowledgement of all the ways people are working to reduce their carbon footprint
  • A neighbourhood bike ride before or after a worship service
  • Bicycle decorating for the young and young-at-heart
• Go to faith.commuterchallenge.ca to register your faith community to take part.
• Once your faith community is registered, register yourself so that you can track your participation and assist others.
• Promote the event in your community — newsletter, website, service bulletins.

 
We Can Help!

• We provide resources to help you to spread the word. Scroll down to the bottom of this page for:
  
  • a complete communications kit (with logo, bulletin blurbs and social media promotion tools)
  • an introductory PowerPoint presentation to share with your faith community or committee
  • a poster
• We would love to hear how your faith community is greening it’s commute!
  • Introduce us to 2 or 3 members of your community who will take part and would be willing to be interviewed, and have their story featured online.
  • E-mail us photos of your event or activities, to be shared online and used for future years.

 
Registration:

Register online at faith.commuterchallenge.ca. Scroll down to the bottom of this page to download the registration instruction. If you have any questions, email us at [email protected].

To make it easier for faith communities with a lot of members participating, one of our participating faith communities has created a registration form, which you can print for your members and have them return on the final day of the challenge. The forms may then be bulk entered online at faith.commuterchallenge.ca.

If you also want to track your workplace trips during the week of June 3-7, visit commuterchallenge.ca.

Benefits of active and sustainable transportation:

• Reduce the threat of climate change — Did you know that it takes 130 trees to produce the amount of oxygen needed to combat the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from one car each year?
• Connect with others — Active transport and ride sharing fosters new friendships, helps others, and increases networking.
• Reduce traffic congestion — Reducing the number of individual car trips means we will have less traffic congestion and less demand for roads. This will improve travel times and reduce fuel consumption.
• Enjoy better health — Introduce calorie-burning exercise time by biking or walking to a public transportation or carpool stop.
• Reduce air pollution — Pollutants from many transportation sources aggravate respiratory disease and contribute to property damage and acid rain.