Thank you, Jason.

It’s been a true pleasure to have your guidance and leadership over the past two years as Chair.  Under your leadership, our national office completed a comprehensive consultation and development of our 2025 – 2030 National Strategic Plan – setting out five key imperatives: Growth; Powerful Voice, Thriving Network, Connected Community and Strong National Team.

You brought to life our commitment to building a Connected Community of leaders by hosting UWCC Board Meetings in local communities across Canada, and by launching our Board Chair to Board Chair calls in 2025. These forums have been instrumental in guiding and developing our National Board of Directors and demonstrating our commitment to our members.

Let me also take a moment to share appreciation for Debra Pozega Osburn as she prepares to leave our national board.  I have three words to describe Debra and her leadership:  Calm (in the storm as you guided us through the Pandemic); Wise (as you guided the board through major files like our DEI and IC strategy); Focused …always grounding us in our role as an organization during challenging times for our Country.  Also, I must say I have a deep appreciation for your love of open-wheel car racing and George Thorogood’s music.

Thank you, Debra!

Looking back on 2024, we made important progress on key initiatives.  A few highlights include:

• Hosting our First national conference in many years, which was a big success.

• The newly established Membership Agreement and Standards was developed and approved. It addresses key issues on governance, privacy and IT, data management and cybersecurity and supports a streamlined compliance reporting process.
• We completed extensive consultations with UWCs and partners leading to our new 2025 – 2030 National Strategic Plan.
• We also launched important initiatives like our new community Impact National Data collection, our Brand Identity Guidelines and Tools, and our Labour Force Strategy for community services. Each are essential as we tell our story of impact and act as a Powerful Voice with government and partners.

Looking ahead, I suspect that most of us agree that the first half of 2025 has been unpredictable, uncertain and frustrating in many ways.  As our communities face multiple challenges caused by economic uncertainty, sustained cost of living challenges, wildfire, and the impact of global conflicts, the work of UWC is as important as ever. Together, we mobilize communities to address our most pressing challenges, hopeful and committed to a better and more inclusive future of all.

As a national office we will be guided by our key Strategic Imperatives of Growth, Power Voice, Thriving Network, Building a Connected Community and a Strong National Team.

We look forward to working with and supporting our UWCs as we build communities where everyone in every community has the opportunity to thrive.