Our Work

What's New

  • The Economic Value of a New Resident - Mike recently completed a study, working with Michele Thibeau of CEDEC in Quebec, to determine the economic value of a new resident. Mike and Michele found that the economic value of a new resident was somewhere between 16 and 35 times the value of their first-year salary over a five-year period. For a worker making $31, 000, that amounted to as much as $1,150,000. Mike and Michele will present their findings at the Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation (CRRF) conference in Rimouski, PQ in September 2021. Click here for Mike's 15 minute interview on the study: https://soundcloud.com/kcrnews/new-to-town-heres-what-youre-worth
  • Using Data to Your Advantage/ Presenting Data - Mike presented in January/February 2022 two interactive Zoom sessions that were sponsored by the Economic Trust of the Southern Interior (ETSI-BC) and Community Futures East Kootenay: https://www.etsi-bc.ca/using-data-to-your-advantage-webinar-series/

Overview

  • CIEL's Communities Matrix, a free one page tool for assessing stages of community readiness, is now used in more than 15 countries across the globe and was recently translated into Russian and Ukrainian. It was named one of the top two tools internationally for assessing community capacity and readiness by the international Community Development Society.
  • Our work has been featured on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Canadian Living Magazine, the Globe and Mail's Report on Business Magazine and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
  • CIEL's Executive Director, Mike Stolte, has been a keynote speaker at more than a dozen international events and presenting on community vitality, the economics of happiness, creating an entrepreneurial culture, the deadly sins of tourism, and tapping into the hidden energy of your people.
  • CIEL has assisted more than 70 communities to action using tools that build economic strength, tourism capacity, boost entrepreneurial thinking and community vitality. We have also trained and accredited qualified trainers in using our tools in British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, Alberta and Victoria (Australia).
  • The Government of Canada contracted CIEL to research, develop, build and run its collaborative Leading Communities leadership program for rural communities in Canada.