The Centre d’appui à la famille et à l’enfance (CAFE) Expands in BC (CAFE — Family and Children’s Support Centre)

Good news for Francophone parents in the province who have children aged 0 to 5: as of now, the programs of the Centre d'appui à la famille et à l'enfance (CAFE) won’t be accessible only to families in Vancouver and Victoria, but also to those in other regions in British Columbia!

In addition, through the CAFE the variety of tools developed by the Fédération des parents francophones de C.-B. for early childhood families will now be offered across the province. As a result, the CAFE will become the gateway to a variety of services and programs for these families, including the “Bébé francophone” welcome kit for new parents, the Tire-Lire resource lending centre, the “Grandir en français” newsletter, and many other resources, all now accessible via the CAFE.

For example: the popular “Petits matins” – which invite parents and their little ones to have fun together in French during gatherings led by a resource person – will continue in Vancouver, but will also be introduced in some other regions in collaboration with local Francophone organizations. Already, we can announce that there will soon be “Petits matins” in Kelowna! These get-togethers will be held at la garderie Les libellules, located in l’école de L’Anse-au-sable; information about this will be shared with the families in that area soon.

Activities and programs will also be offered in person in some other communities. For the provincial capital region, the Société francophone de Victoria will continue to offer programming for families with young children.

In addition, as the pandemic has allowed us to develop a new way to reach parents and facilitate their participation virtually, the CAFE will maintain a range of workshops given as webinars on various themes relevant to parents, regardless of where they may live in British Columbia.

The CAFE is an initiative of the Fédération des parents francophones de Colombie-Britannique. The Fédération will continue to work with partners at the provincial level, and will develop more partnerships over the coming year with regional and local organizations that are also committed to making programming available for families with children aged 5 and under. We invite organizations that would be interested in participating in offering “Les Petits matins” gatherings in their region to contact the CAFE coordinator, Manon Golinvaux, at cafe@fpfcb.bc.ca.

We acknowledge that in order to continue and enhance the CAFE programming, the Fédération des parents has received financial support from the BC Ministry of Children and Family Development, and BC's Francophone Affairs Program. The project is also made possible thanks to funding from the Public Health Agency of Canada, as part of the national “Healthy Early Years” program through the Société Santé en français.

To discover all that the CAFE has to offer, parents with young children can visit the cafe-cb.ca website, which includes a calendar of events, and register for the CAFE’s mailing list, so you don’t miss a thing!