To inform the public and heighten awareness of the difficulties faced by those who live with people suffering from Alzheimer's Disease were the goals Ugo LeBlanc, a student in Communications and Public Relations at the Université du Québec à Rimouski, set for himself. The idea took shape during an internship undertaken by this student during his studies in Special Education. Being in contact with people suffering from the disease, he noticed that there were no resources for their families. Recognizing the extent of the problem, in 1999, he founded the Société Alzheimer de Rimouski and decided to combine stage arts and Alzheimer's Disease with the aim of improving public awareness. Ugo then spent four months writing Ma mère m'a appellée Madame, a play offering avenues for reflection and advice to give succour to the families of people with the disease. The play was performed for the first time on November 11, 2000 (Remembrance Day) and different groups are already thinking of taking it across the Gaspésie region.
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Illiteracy affects over 900,000 people in the province of Quebec. Considering this situation to be a major problem, in 1996, ten students at the Université de Sherbrooke founded an association called Les étudiants et étudiantes en alphabétisation (ÉÉA), a group supervised by the Canada-wide literacy organization Frontier College. Five years later, over one hundred students are involved in the movement. And instead of simply creating a service and attracting customers, these literacy promoters distinguish themselves by a fieldwork approach which enables them to adapt their teaching to the everyday lives of their students. During the 2001-2002 school year, the ÉÉA gave unsparingly to five training programs in reading and writing education, four training programs in homework assistance and three training programs for the promotion of French and literacy. This year, the ÉÉA has innovated by offering reading circles for children up to five years of age living in disadvantaged milieus. The ÉÉA has also enabled volunteer university students to become aware of the true needs of the milieu as well as of social problems in general.
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Last March, students in Landscape Architecture at the Université de Montréal invited the world to rendezvous when they organized the 31st edition of the prestigious international conference: Landscape Architecture Bash (LABASH 2001). The student organizers set everything in motion to ensure LABASH 2001 had international scope by focusing the conference on the future of the profession, multicultural contacts and bringing the continents closer together. In fact, the theme this year, Rendezvous with the World, was inspired by Montreal’s French culture and its multiethnicity. LABASH 2001 brought together over 300 participants from Canada, the United States and Europe. They were able to discuss diverse points of view and present projects, one of which was for an experimental winter garden, thus demonstrating the vitality of students at the Université de Montréal in the field of landscape architecture.
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