Message from the President, Chantal Cloutier

The Friends of the Ottawa Public Library Association (FOPLA) believes a strong and innovative public library system in Ottawa is vital to ensuring a vibrant, well-educated community. FOPLA’s mission is to lead a community of Friends in support of the Ottawa Public Library, and we strive to offer a fulfilling experience to the more than 300 volunteers that help us to carry out our fundraising and advocacy efforts. FOPLA plans for the future are to continue building a growing community of library users and supporters; particularly in anticipation of the exciting new developments OPL is undertaking, such as the Ottawa Central Library project.  On behalf of our association, we thank the OPL Board and staff for their efforts to date and still to come to bring this crucial city-building project to fruition.

Highlights

• Contributed $350,000 to OPL in 2016, FOPLA’s second best donation to OPL to date

• Donated a total of over $2.7M to OPL since 2003

• FOPLA funds provided to the OPL have been used to purchase furniture, equipment, and outreach materials, and helped to fund library programs across the branches

• FOPLA began a rebranding and website renewal process in 2016, with a planned 2017 launch

• Sponsored OPL’s Awesome Authors Youth-Writing contest and published the winners’ stories and poems in the tenth-anniversary edition of pot-pourri

For more information on the Friends, visit OttawaPublicLibraryFriends.ca