Our Strategy
Our vision is for a Bow Valley that values diversity and supports the inclusion and integration of all residents. Our core values as a Partnership are: equity, inclusion, collaboration, and efficacy.
We Take A ‘Collective Impact’ Approach
Each BVIP member contributes to our shared strategic plan. This allows us to create greater change than any single organization or group. Learn more about collective impact here.
Firstly, we learn and research to understand our community’s needs and opportunities
Then, we connect and plan to address what we’ve identified as priorities
Then we implement actions to create change.
We do this process again to make sure we are being proactive, and also responding to the community.
Our Members Contribute To A Shared Strategy
The 2019-2023 Integration Strategy is a collaborative, multi-sector plan to build a more welcoming and inclusive Bow Valley where all residents can participate, contribute, and know they belong.
Read about our strategic priorities for the next four years below.
Our Strategic Priorities
We have identified the following priorities that we will focus on achieving together over the next few years. These priorities were identified through extensive community research.
Our four priorities for 2019-2023 are:
Workforce Development: Making it possible for people to stay in the Bow Valley for a long time by creating more meaningful and safe work opportunities.
Welcoming Attitudes & Behaviours: Reducing discrimination in the Bow Valley and helping immigrants and newcomers to create social connections.
Civic & Political Engagement: Promoting immigrant participation in civic life, including with elections and non-profit boards.
Community Readiness: Supporting organizations to create systems change, and making it easier to connect with local settlement service providers.
Learn more about the goals for each priority area, our objectives, and tactics and actions below.
Priority 1: Workforce Development
Making it possible for people to stay in the Bow Valley for a long time by creating more meaningful and safe work opportunities.
Goals:
The region retains a diverse and stable workforce.
Immigrants have full and equitable access to suitable job opportunities; underemployment is reduced.
Workers are safe, healthy, and connected to community resources.
Employment standards are upheld.
Tactics & Actions:
Improve newcomer awareness of services that support foreign credential recognition
Improve newcomer access to job advancement opportunities in hospitality, tourism, and government sectors
Create new opportunities for immigrant entrepreneurs
Reduce disabling injury rates in the hospitality sector from 3.83% to 2.59%
Co-organize Workplace Inclusion Forum
Develop and strengthen Workplace Inclusion Charter Program
Pilot Language Navigator position
Objectives:
Illuminate new and existing pathways to career development for underemployed immigrants
Improve health and wellness outcomes in the workplace
Support workplace connections to settlement and community resources
Reduce employee turnover: 10%
Priority 2: Welcoming Attitudes & Behaviours
Reducing discrimination in the Bow Valley and helping immigrants and newcomers to create social connections.
Goals:
Established residents have welcoming attitudes towards newcomers.
The diverse cultures of the Bow Valley are seen and celebrated.
Newcomers and long-term locals have continuous opportunities to build social networks and connect with the community.
Immigrants are full and equal participants in recreation and community events.
Tactics & Actions:
Launch anti-discrimination public education campaign
Create multicultural calendar and calendar dissemination strategy
Share ‘Home’ film online and at 2 public screenings
Organize workshop on event planning for ethnocultural associations
Organize 8 regular multicultural community celebrations, including community dinners
Secure access to additional public use indoor space
Offer 12 try-it style recreation programming events
Objectives:
Reduce discrimination rates from 26% to 19%
Build community sense of pride in diversity
Create new opportunities for new locals to build social connections
Create additional inclusive leisure and recreation opportunities
Priority 3: Civic & Political Engagement
Promoting immigrant participation in civic life, including with elections and non-profit boards.
Goals:
The leadership of our community reflects our diversity.
Immigrants are full and equal participants in the political life of the community.
Tactics & Actions:
Create connect to Community newcomer guide
Launch Get Out the Vote campaign (federal election)
Compile backgrounder on municipal efforts to extend municipal voting rights to Permanent Residents
Develop board diversity strategy
Objectives:
Increase immigrant voting rates: 15%
Improve board diversity
Priority 4: Community Readiness
Supporting organizations to create systems change, and making it easier to connect with local settlement service providers.
Goals:
Settlement and non-settlement organizations have the knowledge, skills, and resources to meet the needs of current and future newcomers.
Settlement services are responsive, adaptive, and able to quickly access specialized services as needed.
Newcomers to the Bow Valley connect with the services they need whenever they go (there is no ‘wrong door’ to settlement).
Settlement services in the Bow Valley are sustainable and scalable.
Tactics & Actions:
Offer 2 grant-writing workshops for ethnocultural associations
Recruit 1-2 representatives of ethnocultural associations as active BVIP members
Revise BVIP governance model to strengthen collaboration and include additional stakeholders
Maintain BVIP committees that foster collaboration & awareness of integration needs
Identify and map available itinerant services and possible partnerships with SPOs outside the Bow Valley
Deliver 3 settlement trends bulletin to interagency partners
Develop effective performance measurement tools for LIP partners
Maintain active online database of inclusion related funding opportunities
Complete Municipal Integration Pilot Project (MIP)
Deliver intercultural competency training to 30 non-settlement organizations representatives
Deliver plain language communication training to 30 non-settlement organizations representatives
Improve services for youth, and refugees, including secondary migrants
Improve support for at-risk workers
Improve outreach to rural and remote regions
Improve access to francophone settlement services
Create 'one stop shop' for settlement and orientation resources
Create 3 Connect to Community resource videos
Create 2 new 'Connect to...' newcomer guides
Launch Community Champions (cultural brokers)
Objectives:
Support development of ethnocultural associations
Support ongoing collaboration among local stakeholders
Improve access to itinerant services
Strengthen non-settlement organizations capacity to meet newcomer needs
Address service gaps
Improve availability and accessibility of settlement resources in the community
This living document was last updated: October 3, 2019.
You can also view our Integration Strategy (2015-2018) here.
Our strategy is informed by extensive community research.
In 2019 we heard from over 700 Bow Valley locals through a community survey. We also conducted focus groups, interviews, stakeholder meetings, reviewed large data sets, performed a grey literature review, and more.
We sought to understand immigrant well-being, participation, and inclusion in our community.
Our 2019 Bow Valley Integration Report summarizes this research, and informs our multi-sector strategic plan to build a more welcoming and inclusive community in the Bow Valley.