Report on CFUW OC AGM May 22 & 23, 2026, Peterborough, Ontario
CFUW-KW Attendees: Roberta Bielak (Communications Chair) and Anne Strickland (VP)
Highlights for improving our club:
- Invite students from U of W, WLU and Conestoga College to make one of their credited projects a resolution for CFUW and give them free student membership (recently done by the London Club with Western and Fanshawe). Some of the students are renewing their memberships and even stepping up to serve in Executive positions.
- Faster way for handling motions is to have the meeting chair assume the motion. Seeing no objections, the motion is carried. (Format used at the AGM)
- Environment & Climate Change Chair could be added apart from Advocacy to emphasize the work needed in this specific area. (Chair added to OC board and there will be a speaker series for 26-27 season on Climate change)
- ‘Tech & Tea’ or ‘Wine & Web’ interest group for our savvier women to help those less so with their computer, phone, AI and other tech product issues
- Fundraising ideas from other clubs:
- Home and Garden Tour (Aurora Club)
- Invited designers and realtors to help, some of whom have become members
- Gives CFUW a presence in the community
- Book author signing party with $25 charge
- Bingo (St. Catharines)
- Twice per month raising $1,000 per month
- Through OLG and run by Delta Bingo
- Club responsible for obtaining license from the city and cleanup
- Garage Sale (Barrie)
- Held at a member’s house
- Running last 10 years with usual net of $1,500 but last year made $4,500
- Card Party and Games
- Invite community for $25 charge per person
- Members donate food
- $1,900 / year
- Leadership ideas:
- Cooperative leadership to share the onus and cover leaders who travel extensively
- Reduction in the length of leadership terms to entice women to step up
- AI to take meeting minutes, reducing the Secretarial burden
- Programming ideas:
- Vary meeting times throughout the year. Try breakfast and lunch meetings.
- Making the Resolutions Meeting into a “Pizza & Politics Party” as an enticement
- Don’t give token honoraria, offer a donation to charity of choice including our own CF
- Interest Group Ideas:
- Interest Groups for couples. Bring the partner. Particularly for Supper clubs
- Casual Companions group. People to call if you want someone to go to the movies, shopping trip, whatever.
Other Highlights of interest:
- Senator Donna Dasko spoke about women in government with the following of note:
- The Senate is now at 54% female representation due to Justin Trudeau’s appointments
- Equal representation in the Senate makes a difference as women have different interests in supporting society, such as child and elder care and gun laws
- However, our Parliament has dropped to 75th place in the world for female representation; we were higher once
- One idea for improving female representation is to start off locally by demanding equal representation on municipal committees
- Another idea is to advocate to all of the parties to put more women forward (and not just in ridings where they’re expected to lose)
- AI discussion
- Listed the numerous engines having reliability and the cost of Microsoft’s Copilot for data security
- Emphasis on how to effectively ask questions; verification follow up still required
- Endangered white collar jobs in the near future
- How to conduct a meeting with our MPP or MP:
- Notes provided on who to bring, time keeping, what to present and how to wrap up
- The Perth Club has gone from 75 members to 200 members in the last 3 years alone.
- The Barrie Club is purposefully targeting women in their 50’s and 60’s to join, asking them what they want to see done within the club and immediately asking them to step into leadership roles.
- The Stratford club won the Carolyn Day (Environmental) Award for their “Sustainable Shopping Cart” idea.
