While Canada is among the most prosperous nations in the world, we rank unacceptably low among our peer countries when it comes to children’s health.

The Sandbox Project is a national, registered charity working to improve the health and wellbeing of Canadian children and youth by fostering education, sharing knowledge and resources and developing policy through private-public collaborations. 

Founded in 2009 following research conducted by the Advisor on Healthy Children and Youth for the Federal Government, Sandbox focuses on programs and campaigns that are national in scope, with an aim to benefit all children and youth across Canada.

As an umbrella organization, Sandbox provides strategic leadership, facilitates collaboration and drives innovation among like-minded, child-focused organizations within Canada’s child and youth health arena.

Working Groups and Partnered Initiatives

The Sandbox Project seeks to achieve sustainable and relevant national results in the following specificareas most impacting child and youth health and well-being:

- Child Safety and Injury Prevention, including the creation of strategies toward active, safe kids;

- Growing Healthy Bodies, including the development of strategies to reduce childhood obesity;

- Mental Health and Wellness, including actions to improve access to child and youth mental healthcare;

- The Environment, including strategies to reduce the impact of environmental factors influencing children’s health;

- Empowering Young Canadians to be strong voices on issues relating to child and youth health; and

- Knowledge Translation and sharing promising practices from our network.

What We Do

As a coordinating body, Sandbox brings together researchers, governments, other non-profits and child and youth stakeholder organizations, as well as interested youth, parents and families.

Sandbox facilitates knowledge-sharing and resource-pooling, enabling Sandbox’s partnership network to carry out activities that are difficult or impossible to accomplish by one organization or individual alone.