2022 Ontario Council Recognition Awards
At the 2022 CFUW Ontario Council AGM, clubs were recognized for their winning membership strategies. As well, the recipient of the Carolyn Day Award for Environmental Action was announced.
2022 Membership Challenge
Thank you to all the Ontario Council clubs who took part in the Ontario Council Membership Challenge, 2022. Clubs were certainly challenged during COVID but many stepped up, got creative, worked hard, and continued to recruit and retain members. All the ideas were valuable and worthy but winners were chosen in the two categories of Recruitment and Retention and each received a $300 prize. The criteria for judging was based on following the contest directions, creativity, measurable results stated, and ease of replication by other clubs.
Winners:
Recruitment: CFUW Peterborough – recruited new members by organizing several outdoor activities at various local venues (holiday planter workshop at a local greenhouse, meet and greet, visit to an outdoor gallery), invited guests to each, and showed them what the club is and does to gain their interest before asking them to join.
Retention: CFUW Cornwall – Regular communication and celebration and recognition of members and their stories via phone calls, social media shares and posts, newsletters and virtual activities was the key to Cornwall’s success.
Read more at Membership | CFUW Ontario Council (cfuwontcouncil.org).
Ontario Council Carolyn Day Environmental Action Award for 2022
The Carolyn Day Award for Environmental Action has again been awarded this year, with many thanks to the clubs who applied. For those of you who did not know Carolyn Day, her concern about the environment had started with water problems in Walkerton, just a few miles from her home in Southampton. That passion led her to helping us by writing multiple briefs and letters. For this we honour her work, and your work, with this award for Environmental Action. Thanks to all the clubs for their enthusiasm and their work.
The award winners are listed below, along with their projects. More information about these can be found here.
Teri Shaw – Chair, CFUW Ontario Council Advocacy Committee, 2020-2022
CAROLYN DAY AWARD FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION
AWARD WINNER
| Club | Project |
| CFUW Cornwall & District | Environment Matters – a 12-month awareness campaign that involved a different aspect of the environment every month through action, reading/learning, or both, for club members and friends through emails and newsletter postings, member challenges; social & community action through involvement with 5 different Cornwall environment events, club events such as a youth panel and a picnic and perennial swap. |
HONOURABLE MENTIONS
| CFUW Nepean, Kanata & Ottawa | Tackling the Environment – Together We Can – 3 webinars with Canadian and international speakers on Plastics Free July campaign, reforestation as a way of addressing climate change and how the climate crisis can be addressed to support the war effort during the World War II |
| CFUW Oakville | Environmental Actions Matter – an ongoing project since that this year involved newsletter articles, a film and panel discussion, webinar with speaker, environment based all-candidates meeting for the federal election and an environment website updated daily |
| CFUW Orillia | Single Use Plastic Reduction Challenge – a 9-month challenge with different ones chosen each month, and members reporting via a polling question, including a prize from local business to those involved the most and a newspaper article |
| CFUW Southport | Climate Change – Actions that Impact including two projects: 1. identified a need in community: lack of connection between environment groups, then created a community group to share info with members and community – the Saugeen Shores Environmental Alliance (SEA) as well as creating a Facebook page to share information 2. Climate change awareness with a presentation, speaker and discussion on climate change where members did individual carbon calculator assessments, as well as environment articles throughout the year in the newsletter, a project on single use plastic bags, and club support to members involved with the Environmental Stewardship Ad-Hoc Advisory Committee (ESAC) for the town of Saugeen Shores. |
| CFUW Stratford | Food Waste Reduction Campaign – a 10-week social media campaign with “Use It All Up” as tagline using the 10 letters leading to 10 concepts explained in 3 postings per week: concept, challenges, practical applications. The 30 postings, that the local Rotary has asked to republish, shared on a webpage |
Advocacy Award Booklets from 2003-2004 through 2021-2022 are archived in DropBox and can be viewed or downloaded HERE.
