The Best of CCLOW Networks

by Carol Connick

The P.E.I. network of CCLOW was born on a cold, snowy night; February 24, 1982. Our greatest accomplishment is that a very small membership has been able to launch and carry through many highly successful events. What follows is a brief history of some of the most special of these events.

In 1982 we co-sponsored two seminars with several other organizations. Louise Delude, Monica Townson and Bob Baldwin were resource people at a Women and Pensions seminar and Heather Menzies was the keynote speaker at Women & Microtechnology.

CCLOW-P.E.I. acted as a community-based sponsor for the Women's Employment Development Program an outreach project which ended in 1987, and administered the first Re-entry Project on P.E.I. in 1985.

In 1986 we received a $5,000 CEIC grant to increase the awareness of employment related problems facing Island Women. We organized sessions around such topics as Women's Response to CJS; Bum-out and Power in the Workplace; Part-time Work and Job Sharing; and Non-sexist Approach to Employment Counseling.

The Women's Lecture Series, co-sponsored with several other groups over the years and held on the second Tuesday of each month, has been a regular success. Speakers have included such well-known women as Hon. Lynn Verge, Minister of Education in Nfld., Marilou McPhedran, Maude Barlow, Carol Powell-Ariano, Lisa Avedon, Greta Nemiroff, and Rosemary Sullivan.

CCLOW-P.E.I. has also presented briefs to the Education Review Commission (1984), P.E.I. Legislative Quality of Life Committee, the Parliamentary Committee on Equality Rights, the National Liberal Task Force on Post-Secondary Education, the Vocational Education Study (88), and the Philosophy and Goals Committee of the Department of Education (89). From 1989 into the future we hope to build on this tradition of an active network and continue to work towards the greater equality of women in P.E.I.

by Janeane McGillivray

It wasn't until 1984, when more women than just the director became active CCLOW members, that in the Yukon we could consider taking on a project. But that year we produced and distributed the book Yukon Women: Non-traditional Occupations.

by Janeane McGillivray

We wanted to create a local local resource for high school students to use in career planning, and so we applied for a Secretary of State grant. We formed a steering committee, learned what was required to operate a government grant, and hired two women for the project. Elda Ward and Liz McKee travelled to many of the outlying communities in the Yukon to interview women; they even talked to a trapper at her summer job location in a fire tower. They were overwhelmed with the diversity of work and the unique stories Yukon women had to tell, and encouraged us to consider a second edition before the first was finished.