Join CAWI

Want to support our mission to build a caring, inclusive city? We welcome you to join our diverse community of women across the Ottawa-Gatineau region.

As a CAWI member, you’ll have the opportunity to:

• Learn more about our direction and plans
• Contribute ideas and suggest advocacy issues
• Vote on important decisions in our organization
• Network with others in our community

Our membership fee is $25 each year. We’re committed to making our membership accessible no matter your financial situation, so please contact us if you can’t pay the fee and we’ll find an alternative.

Want to volunteer your time, knowledge or expertise? You can make a big difference by supporting any of the long-term programs that CAWI runs with our partners.

• Making Voices Count works to educate and inspire people to vote. Between election cycles it advocates for social justice with a focus on municipal policies.
• Maamawe: Women Reducing Poverty Together project advocates on housing and other issues which affect a diversity of women.

Our Facilitators’ Network helps to create systemic change in communities and organizations through training, facilitation and dialogue. It’s a unique community that’s diversifying the education spaces and amplifying the voices of women with lived experience of marginalization.

As a CAWI Facilitator, you’d have the opportunity to:

• Speak your truth to help people reflect and learn.
• Design and lead our training and social enterprise services
• Earn a living wage for your facilitation and course design work.
• Be part of a caring community that meets monthly to learn, support and debrief with each other.
• Gain experience and knowledge that could help build or advance your career.

You don’t need to be an expert to become a Facilitator. CAWI provides regular training to the Network on facilitation, design, dialogue, community-based research, popular education and participatory processes.

Could you help us learn from communities and decide what to advocate on? Apply to volunteer on our Women’s Action Committee.

Here’s how volunteers on the Committee can support our work:

• Help plan and facilitate our Women’s Action Forums, such as by inviting women, finding guest speakers and creating a welcoming environment.
• Learn from residents, listen to the concerns they raise, and develop an action plan to address these concerns.
• Identify and watch new policy developments affecting women, girls, non-binary and gender-non-conforming people.
• Watch City Council meetings through a gender equity lens and report on important information.
• Communicate with City Council, including giving deputations.
• Write ‘peach papers’ on new policies.