About Us

CLC Ottawa is a non-profit educational institution (Canadian registered charity 846287415RR0001) that has presented public speaking courses in the National Capital Region every year since 1968.

To donate to CLC Ottawa (and get a tax receipt) please visit our page at CanadaHelps.org: Donate

Our Vision
CLC Ottawa believes that all people deserve the opportunity to realize their full potential as individuals both in the workplace and in social environments by enhancing their leadership and communication skills, as well as their confidence, through the Christopher Leadership Course (CLC).

Our Purpose
Through our courses, CLC Ottawa’s goal is to:

• Help people develop effective communication skills by encouraging them to express their ideas and feelings
• Help people listen to and understand the ideas and feelings of others
• Help individuals develop and realize their own unique talents by providing them with the opportunity and assistance to build key skills and self-confidence
• Encourage individuals to develop their leadership skills by promoting and supporting the well-being of self and others through a spirit of respect, understanding, cooperation, and mutual support.
• Students learn from the instructors, and from each other, but most of all they learn from their personal experience of speaking successfully in front of a group.

Christopher Leadership Courses
The first Christopher Leadership Course in Canada was held in Windsor, Ontario in 1953. Courses have been offered continuously since that date, and have spread across the country from Vancouver Island to Cape Breton. Many tens of thousands of Canadians have joined the ranks of CLC’s successful graduates.

For a list of CLC locations in Canada, US, Korea and China please click here.

Our Teaching Methods
CLC courses are taught by dedicated teams of qualified volunteers who have themselves benefited from taking the course, and have enhanced the skills that they learned in the course through on-going advanced training. This makes possible programs which are sensitive in their approach, time-proven in their effectiveness, yet affordable.

The core of our educational method is our belief that coached personal experience is the most important single contributor to confident public speaking. The team of three or more instructors follows our proven approach for each skill taught:

• First one instructor explains it
• Then another instructor demonstrates it
• Then every student practices the skill in class, with personal coaching. This in-class practice requires more time than lecture-style courses, but is essential for success.

As a non-profit educational organization, our tax deductible tuition fee need only pay for essential costs such as course materials and room rentals. To keep our overhead low. we have no paid employees and no dedicated office space.