Issues and Advocacy 

In this Together 

CFUW, and the CFUW-Ottawa club use our collective expertise to try to bring about change. Our current national priorities are education, equity and social justice, and safe and healthy communities.

Within those categories CFUW-Ottawa’s priority concerns in recent years have been to consider how we can respond to:

• the challenges faced by young women and girls of Afghanistan;

• gender-based violence;

• menstrual inequity;

• environmental and climate change issues;

• misinformation in the media.

CFUW works at local, provincial, national and global levels for the adoption and implementation of legislation to protect and benefit all women and girls. We send letters, meet with decision makers, host public meetings and organize fundraising.

Members of CFUW-Ottawa concentrate on local issues, but as part of the network of clubs across Canada, we also support CFUW-Ontario Council on provincial issues, and the CFUW National Board on national and international issues. At a global level, we collaborate with Graduate Women International to which CFUW belongs.

Our advocacy and activism are based on resolutions: policies that have been adopted at our national Annual General Meetings. Click here to access the most recent issue of the CFUW Adopted Resolutions book.

The CFUW-Ottawa Advocacy Committee

• encourages our club members to educate themselves;

• helps to brief CFUW Presidents to lobby all levels of government;

• collaborates with like-minded organizations;

• helps other CFUW clubs to amend the national resolutions they propose.

Occasionally, if CFUW does not already have a policy on an issue of concern to us, our Ottawa committee researches and develops a policy resolution for approval by CFUW members nationwide. The most recent Ottawa resolutions were on Pay Day Loans (in 2020) and the Canadian Response to the Education Crisis in Afghanistan (in 2026).

We share information in our club's newsletter, The Capital Carillon, on our website and at our General Meetings.

Each year, the Issues and Advocacy Committee is also responsible for organizing a special event in March, in honour of International Women's Day.

Present club members may be interested in matters we have not yet considered, so if a particular issue causes you concern, tell us about it (write to advocacy@cfuw-ottawa.org) and let us see what we can do.

We invite you to join us!