Family School Travel Toolkit

Looking for strategies to engage parents and caregivers in active school travel? 

Parents and caregivers play a key role in determining if a child will walk or wheel to school. The resistance to change amongst those who choose to drive their children to school remains an ongoing and significant barrier to renormalizing active school travel within communities across Canada.

Previous engagement work found a strong desire for messaging that is more emotional than existing materials geared towards parents and caregivers. Background research has demonstrated that messaging for parents and caregivers that highlights the barriers, factors, and motivators while they are in the key stages of change can be effective in shifting perceptions or attitudes towards certain modes of travel.

The Inspire Active Journeys to School: Communications Kit was developed with the objective of creating materials and resources that promote and support active school travel among parents and caregivers, and in turn, more broadly affect change in the decision-making processes surrounding school travel.

 Sample Messages

Sample captions are provided for guidance and inspiration, but we encourage organizations to share the materials in whatever manner they feel works best for them and their audiences. 

One round of A/B testing was completed in March of 2023 to test different supporting messaging for the assets. Each asset that was included in the testing was shared with two different captions to determine which was more engaging for the target audience. Captions with the highest engagement are included in the below sample messaging document. 

Download sample messaging document. 

Activity Sheets

Activity Sheets support the messaging presented in the graphic assets and provide parents with the resources to better prepare and act on their decisions to choose active modes of transportation to school. The activity sheets can be linked to and shared as a supplementary resource to the graphic assets, as well as an interactive tool for parents, caregivers, and children. 

Download all activity sheets EN / FR

Graphic Assets

Graphic Assets include emotional messaging and imagery that calls on parents to question and reassess their decisions surrounding school travel. The resources have been provided in multiple formats to support their use across different platforms and for varying audiences. 

Download all animated assets EN / FR

Download all video assets EN / FR

Download all graphic assets EN / FR

Download all carousel assets EN / FR

This is a project led by Green Communities Canada (GCC), made possible through financial support from the Government of Ontario.