CRIEC has been busy with
three significant mentoring initiatives

We have re-engaged our original employer partners such as the City of Calgary, SNC-Lavalin, Shaw Communications, Flint Energy and TransCanada and recently added new employer partners in Desjardins Insurance and JMP Engineering. We are working with several other employers – including banks, professional services and oil & gas companies. We now have 39 employer partners and expect to have at least 50 by the end of 2013.

We have greatly increased our mentor base with 325 committed Calgary professionals as of March 15, 2013, providing their time, expertise and passion to our internationally trained professionals (ITPs). We expect to have more than 400 mentors by the end of 2013.

We have also significantly enlarged our mentee base with 615 ITPs as of March 15, 2013, covering more than 40 countries and 40 professions. Again, we expect solid growth this year and look to have more than 800 mentees by the end of 2013.

And we now have 18 community partners, exchanging best practices and tools/resources designed to better connect ITPs with Calgary employers.

Classic 1-on-1 mentoring strategy – our flagship tool, connecting ITPs with their counterparts in corporate Calgary. This strategy continues to deliver results. Over the past two years, we have helped connect more than 330 ITPs and Calgary professionals in engineering, law, HR, IT, accounting, heath care, and community development in occupation-specific mentoring relationships. Mentoring really works – just ask the almost 70% of the ITPs who have been mentees in this strategy and who have found meaningful employment in their field of expertise, earning good salaries and, more importantly, forging careers here in Calgary.

SmartConnections – this strategy works with ITPs in creating sustainable career paths, whether within or outside their field of expertise. ITPs learn how to effectively and efficiently transfer their skills, experience and passion into a viable career path – and employers gain an appreciation how to really connect to the global talent that is here in this great city. Over the past year, more than 250 ITPs, 5 employer partners and 10 community partners have taken advantage of this SmartConnections approach to connect and explore skill transferability in a robust manner. And this approach has already been duplicated in Edmonton, Ottawa, Toronto and soon in Montreal. Check with Winners/Home Sense, Walmart and Desjardins Insurance about the power of employer-driven SmartConnections. And check with Flora Stevenson and her Canadian Association of Internationally Trained Lawyers about the value of profession-driven SmartConnections!

MentoringCircles – thanks to outstanding pilot project support from RBC Foundation and Alberta Enterprise & Advanced Education (FQR), we successfully launched our latest strategy called MentoringCircles. Designed to create both tools and space for developing communication skills, this approach is already attracting significant attention amongst employers and ITPs alike. Our pilot phase has connected 6 mentors/SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises) with 19 mentees in an intensive 3-month program combining Essential Skills workshops and “conversations”. Lisa Dare is our fearless Mentoring Circles Coordinator and Bow Valley College is our outstanding partner in working with mentors and mentees and in designing and delivering our workshops.

We are in the community

CRIEC has had an active winter speaking, providing workshops and presenting strategic sessions with many community partners - Bredin Institute, Bow Valley College, CGA and CMA, CCVO, Western Canada Consortium, Metropolis Canada, Columbia College and Lethbridge Newcomers Network to name but a few.

We are working closely with ethno-specific communities such as the Chinese, Nigerian, Columbian, Indo, Filipino and Ethiopian and Eritrean communities – discussing mentoring strategies, employment outcomes and integration issues.

Website

We are re-building this website…finally!

In the meantime, check out this site for news and visit us on our social media platforms which are continually being updated with great stories, pictures, videos and upcoming events: