« Élargir l’espace francophone » project

Élargir l’espace francophone is a pilot project of the Ministry of Education that engages various partners from the Francophone community as well as from the private sector. Working with three community liaison agents from the Centre canadien de leadership en évaluation, the program led to a number of successful initiatives involving Francophone students, including two described below.

The first initiative saw over 300 under-privileged students from three Eastern French-language school boards take part in an all-French day camp in Quyon, Quebec, organized by the Tim Horton’s Foundation. Over the course of three to seven days, these students enjoyed various sports and cultural activities in a totally French-speaking environment.

The second initiative allowed a delegation of 100 students from French-language high schools to attend the annual convention of the Association française des municipalités de l’Ontario in September 2010, as part of the school activities. The goal was to allow these students to gain a better understanding of the roles of municipal representatives and school trustees. This successful project will be renewed and expanded next year, thanks to the Association’s willingness to add a youth component to its next annual convention.

The Commissioner strongly encourages the government to continue funding the Élargir l’espace francophone projects that have shown many positive results with modest resources and investment. Indeed, the Commissioner believes these pilot partnership initiatives fully support the objectives of the government’s Aménagement Linguistique policy.

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