Our Services - Green Light Check-Up
What is the Green Light Check-up?
In response to heightened environmental awareness and to federal government funding available for sustainability planning, many Canadian communities are developing Integrated Community Sustainability Plans (ICSPs) or are embarking on similar sustainability planning processes. An ICSP is a comprehensive sustainability planning process, and something required by other levels of government to access federal Gas Tax moneys.
CIEL has developed the Green Light Check-Up to help communities get started on sustainability planning. Click here to watch a video on the Green Light.
The Green Light Check-Up:
- gauges public opinion on a wide variety of sustainability issues, as a first step in community planning
- measures readiness to undertake sustainability planning & action
- records any sustainability successes that should be acknowledged & built upon
- lays out a community’s strengths, weaknesses and available resources
- flags obstacles, challenges and areas of sensitivity
- allows comparison with a group of other communities
CIEL recognizes that many communities are worn out by long consultation processes and complicated research reports. The Green Light uses a unique web-accessible questionnaire to gauge your community’s readiness for sustainability planning and at the same time to take some preliminary steps in that planning.
"CIEL has developed very professional tools and approaches that truly meet community needs. They have a lot of depth.”
- Mary Ward, Human Systems, Ashland, Oregon, USA
What is Sustainability Planning?
The term “sustainability” often refers to the question of whether the natural environment can sustain itself in the face of our demands on it. Sustainability planning is an attempt to ensure that our environmental and social systems will sustain human activity over the long term. Sustainability issues are complex and overlapping, and often encompass environmental, social and economic issues.
A sustainability plan typically encompasses such things as transportation, energy, climate change, waste management, and air quality and it will also emphasize long-term thinking, collaboration between departments and between sectors, engaging community stakeholders, creating partnerships, and continuous monitoring and evaluation.
A sustainability plan is an opportunity for communities to look long-term at the community they want, and to take the proactive steps to move there, engaging everyone in the process.
"Mike and his tools and processes are wonderful to work with. He knows communities. The depth of CIEL’s tools bring credibility, rigour and confidence to the process.”
- Antoinette Danaher, Uncommon Solutions PL, Bendigo, Victoria, Australia
Benefits of the Green Light Check-up
- Quick & cost- effective
- Provides easy-to-read reports
- Finds gaps and strengths in 5 key areas of sustainability
- Community (not consultants) sets priorities & realistic actions
- Allows comparison to similar communities
- Helps to leverage resources
- Identifies key community strengths assets, gaps & resources
- Conducted by objective outside facilitator
- Analytical expertise of CIEL and unique scoring system
- Builds capacity & networks in the community
- Helps move a community from indecisiveness to action
How Does the Green Light Check-up Work?
Green Light Check-Up requires 15 to 40 community members to complete 60 questions. Participants require only 10 to 30 minutes to complete the questionnaire online or in person. The Green Light Check-Up extracts significant strategic information in a structured manner in a short period of time. In this way, Green Light Check-Up is an efficient use of time for a community. For a further discussion of how using such small numbers of participants can yield useful results, click here and scroll to the FAQ entitled "Why does CIEL work with such small sample sizes?"
The Check-Up has three phases:
I. Assessment Session
The assessment is carried out online unless the community decides to hold a community meeting.
II. Analysis and Report Writing:
CIEL analyzes the questionnaire responses and compiles a report, comparing your community with a group of other communities, giving you an important reference point and a community benchmark.
III. Report back
The report and slide show are provided to the community. A presentation by CIEL can be conducted at a meeting, over the phone, or via teleconference to the local organizing committee or the larger community.
"The tools provide important benchmarks and are measurable – something communities need. Besides that, the processes are fun, easy to understand and engaging.”
- Mike Dalmau, High Country Management Enterprises, Acheron, Victoria, Australia