The combination of regional economic effervescence, retaining young people in the area and the effective integration of immigrants, this sums up in a few words the tour de force that FormAction has successfully carried out in the Lower Laurentian region. With at its helm a highly dynamic young woman from the Gaspé Peninsula, an Egyptian devoted to equitable relations and a Cameroonian with a passion for sustainable development, all studying at the Université du Québec à Rimouski, FormAction has set itself apart by being a multi-ethnic cooperative of student-workers. The organization, which specializes in project coordination and development consulting, is extremely innovative in that it has demonstrated to the region’s other enterprises that, in the context of economic globalization, multi-ethnicity is the best direction to take to capture new markets. And FormAction can already appreciate its success. Thanks to contracts in the Magdelan Islands, the Saguenay, the Lower Laurantian region and the Gaspé Peninsula, the surprisingly heterogeneous enterprise has aroused the interest of numerous people from various regions. In fact, FormAction has designed a meeting-workshop which has enabled it to heighten awareness, among company managers and the region’s leaders, of the importance of young people and multi-ethnicity in increasing the competitiveness of local businesses.
For more information >>>

“When China awakes, the world will tremble,” Napoleon once admonished. Today, from a purely economic standpoint, it can only be said that he was right. And last spring, in order to witness first-hand the evolution of this future leading world economic power, some twenty students from the École Polytechnique de Montréal spent three weeks in China as part of the Poly-Chine 2005 mission. Concrete examples of dynamism, commitment and openness to the world, the future engineers took part in the project for a period of two years. On the programme: logistics, financing and the drawing up of various documents, as well as introductory courses in Mandarin and on local culture. During their stay, they visited 35 institutions and businesses, and were able, on their return, to prepare and publish a comparable analysis with Québec focusing mainly on information technologies, transportation, biotechnology, the use of natural resources and the environment. But above all, the Polytechnique’s first mission on Chinese soil raised awareness among the leaders of tomorrow of the issue of global competition and the importance of technological innovation for Québec in the new world economy
For more information >>>

For nearly two years, over 45 students at the Université Laval have been working together to fulfill a shared dream: to supervise and administrate the food facilities located on their campus. This ambitious, large-scale and unifying project, called Entithé, is entirely unique and bears witness to the great fervour and commitment of its founders. Their ultimate goal: to offer students cafeterias that respect the values fostered by this rising generation, that is to say a healthy diet and respect for the environment, while at the same time enabling students to develop their savoir-faire and entrepreneurship. Indeed, the eating facilities coveted by Entithé generate an annual turnover of over two million dollars and employ some fifty people. The promoters of this truly socio-educational enterprise have left nothing to chance and have invested thousands of hours of work in order to present a structured business plan based on solid arguments and every minute detail has been examined. The fruit of a close collaboration, Entithé even plans to distribute the entire profits of its undertaking among the student population.
For more information >>>