Our Hope Project is a co-action between CFUW Salt Spring Island Club and CGEF, Commonwealth Girls Education Fund, https://www.cgefund.org/
Its aim is to assist academically deserving girls whose families are unable to fund their secondary school education. Students are selected from applicants proposed for funding by CGEF. To ensure that funds are secure and used to best advantage, CGEF sends sponsorship monies directly to the schools the girls are attending. The funds cover tuition costs, uniforms, entrance examinations, transportation costs and school meals. There is no administrative deduction from the funds raised by CFUW/SSI.
With financial assistance, these students have the opportunity to reach their potential. Many become role models for their families and leaders in their communities. As young women, they have gone on to work in spheres such as teaching, nursing, accountancy, engineering, tourism, and many more.
Our club began the Hope project in 2005 with the sponsorship of three girls. This year, the Hope project is sponsoring 25 girls, bringing the total to 193 girls who have had the opportunity of completing their secondary education through our support. The 25 girls that are being sponsored in 2019/20 come from the following countries: Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Lesotho, Rwanda, Sierra Leone & Sri Lanka. In 2016 CFUW Salt Spring Island received the International Award for their Hope project. If your club is interested in pursuing a project similar to ours, contact us by emailing us at info@cfuwssi.ca for information.
SSI Club awards for 2016
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Background – formation of CGEF and the HOPE Project
One of the members of our club, Lyndsay Mundy, is one of the original wives of High Commissioners of Britain, who together witnessed a tragic lack of education for poor but bright girls in the Commonwealth countries where these ladies lived and worked, and who together formed the Commonwealth Countries League Education Fund over 52 years ago to educate these young women. That league is now called the Commonwealth Girls Education Fund https://www.cgefund.org/.
Without those visionary women, there would be no CGEF and no SSI Hope Project today. Lyndsay was the driving force behind creating the Hope project. She was recognized as a Noble Woman and honoured at the CFUW 100th anniversary AGM in Winnipeg in 2019 and congratulated by the Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba. Both are very important validations of CFUW international work and achievements.
At the L. Governor’s reception 
Lyndsay Mundy meeting the LG of Manitoba 
Lyndsay Mundy, CFUW SSI’s Honourable Woman
Submitted by Sandra Hyslop, chair of the Hope committee, CFUW Salt Spring Island
