Conducting an internal and external environment scan means taking a look at your community’s resources, strengths and assets in light of trends and influences affecting you. The internal environmental scan takes an inventory of your community resources. For example, these can include the people, health, education, businesses and job opportunities, housing, art and culture, leisure and entertainment and geography. From this snapshot, you can later extract your community’s key strengths and develop strategies that support your priorities.
An external environmental scan looks at what is happening outside of your community on a regional, provincial, national and global level that may affect immigration and your community. This would include government policy that may affect immigration as well as population, economy and lifestyle trends.
The starting point for an environmental scan is an inventory of community resources. Assessing community capacity is fundamental in ensuring sustainability of your growth strategy. A type of assessment called SWOT analysis looks at your community’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. In this Immigration Planning Guide we will refer to the resource inventory and its assessment together as an environmental scan .
This inventory should be exhaustive and include detailed information on each sector of the community. For example, when reviewing the business environment be sure to capture information on:
This inventory will provide a wealth of information that can be used for many purposes; the community marketing plan, recruitment plans, identifying gaps in community services and leveraging unique community strengths. It will also provide you with an understanding of the resources that will be impacted by immigration, allowing you time to prepare both resource providers and the community at large.
Your community’s population is impacted by what is happening regionally, provincially, nationally and globally. To truly understand community population you will have to build a population “picture” for your community. This picture consists of:
This research is required to develop your community’s immigration plan and will also be used to inform the greater community about how and why the community needs to prepare for population trends that affect you.
SWOT Analysis is a framework for analyzing your community’s Strengths and Weaknesses, and the Opportunities and Threats. Once you identify your strengths and weaknesses, you can minimize threats, and take advantage of opportunities available to you.
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Strengths What does your community do well? What unique resources do you have? What do others see as your strengths? |
Weaknesses What could you improve? Where do you have fewer resources than other communities? What do others see as your weaknesses? |
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Opportunities What good opportunities are available to you? What trends would you take advantage of? How can you turn your strengths into opportunities? |
Threats What trends could affect you negatively? What are competing communities doing? How would a weakness be potential threat? |
You have now completed your inventory of resources and determined your community’s strengths and weaknesses. Take some time and try and view your community from the perspective of an immigrant, someone who is looking to make your community their new home. Ask yourself:
Who is there to answer our questions?
Your environmental scan will go a long way in providing you with information to answer some of these questions. Health, education and housing are the immediate requirements that come to mind, however within the realm of education it is important to consider language-training opportunities for all ages.
Language can be a challenging barrier for immigrants. English as an Additional Language (EAL), previously English as a Second Language (ESL), resources will need to be available. Language training maybe required for all ages, school age children to seniors and all members of the family. Manitoba communities that have immigration strategies have implemented many different types of adult programs ranging from one on one language training provided by volunteers, to classrooms with instructors to workplace language training programs. Children receive EAL instruction in public schools.
