Paul Fletcher of Aviva Canada
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 …
