By Susan Robinson
Educating girls and women is a core purpose of CFUW locally and nationally. The national CFUW Charitable Trust has an excellent scholarship program for women pursuing graduate studies. If you know someone who is looking at graduate studies, encourage her to apply for a nationally funded scholarship. A link to application details is in this article.
A few months ago, national office started a program called “Membership Moments”. It is a series of focused conversations regarding how to improve club activities. Every member is invited to attend and details on how to “Zoom in,” as well as summaries of the last few sessions, can be found in this article.
Finally, from national, there is an update about a CFUW brief to the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women. On December 6, CFUW K-W club members attended the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women Vigil that was held at 5:30pm at the St. Columba Anglican Church at 250 Lincoln Rd, in Waterloo, Ontario.
On Friday, November 15, the applications opened for the 2025-2026 Charitable Trust Awards. The applications are managed by Universities Canada, but the selection of award winners will be made by the CFUW Fellowships Committee. The application portal will remain open until January 10.
Almost without exception, CFUW Clubs have their own scholarship funds, but the majority of these are supporting young women graduating from high school. The Charitable Trust (CT) awards are for women pursuing graduate studies. This year there will be fourteen awards and information can be found on the CT website at www.cfuwcharitabletrust.ca.
The Trust invites Clubs to share this information with their members and to ask them, in turn, to share within their network of friends and family. Clubs may also have contacts with their local university. CFUW has been funding further studies for women since 1919 and it is the support of CFUW Clubs and individual members that enables the CT to continue its work.
CFUW National has introduced a new feature called Monday Membership Moments. It is a Zoom meeting and takes place on the 4th Monday of every month at 4pm ET.
Topics have included attracting new members, raising our profile, and making CFUW known in our communities and retaining new recruits.
There have been three Membership Moments sessions so far. The PowerPoint and notes from the sessions are available on the Member’s Drive here (https://cfuw.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8efb82640cb8bc1fd889b4668&id=4147c07f8e&e=a6e15b7545) or go to Biennium 2024-2026 then CFUW Committees then Membership, Projects, MemMoments.
We’ll let you know when the January session topic is announced, so you can plan to join if it is of interest to you.
CFUW recently submitted a brief to the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women for its study on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide. Our brief focused on the importance of gun control measures as a critical way to prevent femicide.
CFUW has a long history of advocating for stricter gun control, following the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre. Access to firearms is one of the highest risk indicators for intimate partner violence resulting in death. The danger is particularly high in rural areas, where both the risk of gender-based violence and access to guns are higher. In fact, firearms are the most common method used to kill an intimate partner or child in rural areas. Guns are also used as tools to intimidate, control, and coerce, with their presence in the home often making it too dangerous for women to leave abusive situations.
Read CFUW’s full parliamentary brief.
