INTRODUCTION

THE EDUCATION CONNECTION was the first C.C.L.O.W. conference to reach out beyond our current membership. In October 1977, in Winnipeg, 40 women educators met to create a national network devoted to increasing and improving learning opportunities for women. In April 1979, in Banff, 65 members of the C.C.L.O.W. national network met to share expertise in certain key areas of our work, and to create a flexible organizational structure for C.C.L.O.W. Now, in October 1981, 450 women and men took part in a bilingual conference in Halifax to explore the connection of poverty, aging, career options and rural life with women's learning needs.

The variety of backgrounds and expertise of all of the conference participants was both stimulating and challenging. The conference was planned to bring together both providers of learning programs and the women who need them. It was alive with sharing and the bonds that are the heart of new networks. Workshops were presented in either English or French, with simultaneous translation provided for all major speeches and plenary sessions. This reflects the commitment of C.C.L.O.W. to become more responsive to the special learning needs of francophone women and to learn from their ideas and experience.

Already, the value of the conference is reflected in the many new memberships in C.C.L.O.W., particularly in the Atlantic region. C.C.L.O.W. will continue to hold its national conferences in different regions across the country in order to stimulate involvement from an area and to focus on learning projects and needs in the area.

THE EDUCATION CONNECTION was a many dimensional conference. In addition to workshops, the weekend included C.C.L.O.W.'s annual meeting, entertainment by Cape Breton feminist, Rita McNeil, dinner speakers, Dr. Margaret Fulton and Madeline LeBlanc, and a final plenary to which workshop recommendations were presented for approval and action.

Workshops, speeches, meals and entertainment were planned as a whole, an event which would renew our personal-political-educational network. One of the participants remarked that the "discovery that C.C.L.O.W. offers support helped (me) in establishing (my) own priorities".