Family Literacy Day is taking place on January 27, marking its 25^th year! The Day raises awareness of the importance of reading and engaging in other literacy-related activities as a family. CPF National has scheduled a family bilingual story time activity in Ottawa with Madame Amy. We encourage our CPF leaders to mark the Day by incorporating French into their family literacy activities! For more information: https://abclifeliteracy.ca/all-programs/family-literacy-day/ (English and French resources available)

The Canadian Parents for French National Board has a vision for a strong, equitable and resilient Network, focused on building shared leadership, supporting engaged membership and volunteers, and delivering relevant, quality programming to parents and youth learning and using French.

PCH Letters Received Confirming Supplemental Funding – Action Plan 2023-2028
CPF Branches and Offices received a letter on January 12, 2024, to confirm that our organization(s) are each eligible for an increase of up to 12.5 percent in programming core funding starting in 2023-2024, retroactive to April 1, 2023. The purpose of this increase will be to strengthen the capacity of organizations to cope with rising operating costs and offer competitive working conditions allowing recognition of the community sector as an employer of choice. To obtain this increase the Branch or Office authorized person must have signed the pre-filled form and return it no later than Friday, January 19, 2024, end of day. More follow up will be completed to understand how to obtain possible further increases in the second year (2024-2025) of the Action Plan.

CPF National Awards of Recognition
The period to accept nominations for the three CPF National Awards of Recognition is now open until March 4, 2024. These awards recognize individuals who have demonstrated exceptional commitment and leadership to the organization. For more details and to download a nominations form, visit the website at: https://cpf.ca/en/cpf-awards/

French Footprints – French in the Early Years
CPF Branches and Offices have completed service agreements in December with CPF National to support the promotion of this initiative in their respective jurisdictions (to the maximum amount of $10,000). Certain CPF Branches and Offices have also entered into agreements with Voilà Learning to promote their early years virtual project called Metalingo, funded by PCH and complementary to our CPF Network initiative.

As part of this initiative, CPF opened scholarships for CPF member families to learn French together through virtual French programming. The six-week sessions are available for three age groups – Infant/toddler (0-2 years), Preschooler (2.5 to 4 years), and Child (4- to 9 years). The goal is to involve all parents, despite not having French knowledge, in their child’s enjoyment of discovering this new language. We were overwhelmed by the response – 247 registrations were received in the first three days. We can accommodate 75 families in this first winter cohort; and we will open an early spring group to accommodate another 75 families. Selection of families did take into consideration geographical location for equitable pan-Canadian distribution. Those not accommodated within these two cohorts will be placed on a priority list along with the growing waitlist. We look forward to confirming further funding to enable us to regularly offer this as part of early years core programming.

Concours 101 – Two Student Support Workshops
CPF National hosted two free preparatory bilingual workshops for the Concours d’art oratoire 2024 season for students grades 7-12 in partnership with Speech and Debate Canada, with two subject matter experts, Jordan Burg & Richard Picotin. Both sessions have been recorded and may be accessed by students on the CPF National website.

• Workshop #1: How to Prepare a Persuasive Speech (January 17) - The important elements of selecting a topic, creating a persuasion, and constructing and composing a complete and coherent exposition to present as a formal speech.
• Workshop #2: Delivering your Speech  (January 18) - The importance of posture, eye contact and speed as they deliver their speech; techniques to effectively deliver the speech and tips for preparing in French.

New Hire - Welcome!

On Monday January 15,  we welcomed Heather Cavanagh into the position of Director, Network Communications, Marketing & Development. Heather is an experienced communications and marketing professional who will make an immediate contribution with her expertise in database, digital marketing and managing functions through transition and change management. She will focus on leading the CPF Digital Transformation work with our communications consultant firm, Phil, and our CPF national committee. She will help position our messaging to reach new audiences and increase donorship to benefit CPF Network initiatives. She can be reached at : hcavanagh@cpf.ca.

CPF Network Code of Conduct, Ethics – April 1^st signatures required

The updated document has been finalized and shared with the Network volunteer leaders during this year’s Board Orientation sessions. Moving forward, all CPF staff and Branch volunteer leaders will be requested to review the contents annually and sign to confirm their understanding of the expectations. Staff documents will be posted on their personal BambooHR profile. Volunteer leader documents will be posted on their Better Impact profile. Deb Powers, Network Manager, Human Resources, will contact each Branch to gather the signed documents and confirm the exercise is complete by June 30, 2024. We thank everyone for their support of this initiative.