In an aim to promote openness to other world cultures, Nancy Fall and Marianne Dubé established a project of childlike simplicity: a hand-crafted book. The two students in French language teaching helped students create a book about their everyday lives and their culture. Once translated, the work was sent to a foreign school where students had performed the same exercise. In carrying out the project with a class in Mongolia, Nancy and Marianne enabled both the teachers and pupils to discover a culture diametrically opposed to theirs. The project proved to be such an educational success that it is already the subject of training programs, interviews, workshops, lectures and even exhibitions across the province. To help them achieve such success, the two students had the support of university associations that advocate the importance of education. They thus obtained a total of $10,000 in funding from the Association des étudiants au baccalauréat en enseignement du français langue seconde (ABEFLS) and the Confédération des associations d’étudiants et d’étudiantes de l’Université Laval (CADEUL). Wiser for this innovative pedagogical exchange, they produced a video documentary on their project. Distributed in particular to Québec school boards and multicultural centres, it has proven to be a precious tool for teaching in a multi-ethnic context.
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The second Nuit de la philosophie was held on March 25 and 26, 2006. The major multidisciplinary event brought together over 3,500 participants from all four corners of Québec. Founded by five students at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), the popularization project enables adepts as well as the uninitiated to take part in free philosophy activities outside the usual university setting. For 24 hours, the public thus had the opportunity to rediscover philosophy thanks to a hundred or so highly varied activities: lectures, theatre, public readings, a concert of socially-committed music, permanent exhibitions, interactive games and more. A videoconference system even gave participants the chance to interact with philosophers from numerous countries such as France, Romania, Haiti, Cameroon and Senegal. To successfully carry out this large-scale project, the organizing committee, assisted by some fifty volunteers, put in over 3,000 hours of work in 8 months. And their exemplary motivation has succeeded in giving philosophy all its former glory of bygone days when it took centre stage in the public arena.
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In 2004, five students at McGill University who share a passion for international cooperation founded the Aprender Canada project. The organization, which is now well-established in Chile, teaches English in communities where pedagogical resources are inadequate in an effort to favour employment and thus break the circle of poverty. In a country where over four million inhabitants do not have access to essential goods and services – such as health care, housing and education -, learning the English language is a key factor for the country’s economic development. This year, 14 volunteer students from McGill University will participate in internships at disadvantaged schools in the heart of the most impoverished neighbourhoods of Santiago, Chile. Through a partnership between Chilean host organization Corporacion Educacional Aprender and the International Relations Students’ Association of McGill, the project rapidly proved its worth. The non-profit organization Aprender Canada gives young Chileans renewed hope and ambition and thus provides them with the means of aspiring to a brighter future.
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