Éclosion

Committed to sending cooperants abroad to help build a more equitable society

Drawing inspiration from the UN’s millennium development goals, Éclosion’s mission is to help local communities attain their full potential and pool their resources in order to fight poverty and exclusion. “We must take collective action and take on more responsibility for building a more just and sustainable society,” ardently points out Alexandra Krissy Martel, spokeswoman for …closion, an association founded and run by students from all academic disciplines at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR).

To attain these goals, since 2003 Éclosion has been establishing lasting ties between the UQTR student community and community development organizations in Cameroon. To ensure top quality services, the volunteer students help carry out projects with the collaboration of Cameroonians, while providing follow-up and technical and logistical support.

“In concrete terms, we have provided assistance to several groups of women and young people, helping enhance their education and socio-economic emancipation through training, access to a head office, the securing of government recognition and the development of their profit-making activities,” explains Alexandra.

For example, there’s a school near Bandjoun, a town located in the country’s western region, that has to contend with corruption on a daily basis but provides elementary school education and technical training to street children or those from poor families. The school currently caters to 320 pupils, including 145 girls, and relies on a staff of 18 teachers. Éclosion helped design the school and contributes voluntarily by offering school supplies and training workshops.

“Cooperation wouldn’t exist without cooperants and this is why, every year since its creation, Éclosion has been sending a team of university students abroad to carry out mandates established according to medium and long term strategies,” Alexandra adds.

To support its action and renew its bank of cooperants, Éclosion has already organized three benefit concerts and taken part in the multicultural days event at UQTR. Moreover, every year several lectures are organized on campus to promote the benefits of international aid and Éclosion’s activities. In 2007, the association even hosted an annual symposium focusing on education and cooperation with the goal of advocating the development of inter-university networks along the same lines as Éclosion.

Éclosion’s success in Cameroon has had such a positive impact that the student organization has set up two other projects, one in India and the other in Chile. In the summer of 2009, in addition to the five students in Cameroon, five other students were sent to these two new countries. In the past few years, 70 Canadian and foreign students, enrolled at different universities here and in Europe, have taken part in Éclosion’s activities.

“For us, the greatest success does not lie in the number of people we help, but rather in the quality of the support we provide to enthusiastic men and women who put their heart and soul into improving their quality of life. (…) All Éclosion cooperants unanimously agree that an experience such as this completely changes their perception of the world and opens their eyes to a whole new facet of life,” Alexandra concludes.

Éclosion