Through the "Refaire le monde en français" project, we want to show that French is a useful language, able to carry innovative and green initiatives.

Can you go back to the genesis of this project ?

There is a common educational ecosystem between Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia: that of the bilingual classes that have existed since the 1990s, and where reinforced teaching of and in French is offered. All three countries share the dynamism of the French-speaking world, and are full members of the OIF. Cambodia is even one of the founding members. It seemed appropriate to join forces in view of these similarities.

The idea was so to offer a project to teachers and students of bilingual classes on a regional scale. We knew we could rely on CREFAP - Centre Régional Francophone d'Asie-Pacifique de l'OIF -, which is in charge of teacher training and reinforcing the attractiveness of French to students, and on the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF), which notably has Francophone employability centers in our 3 countries. Both of these organizations responded as soon as we outlined our vision!

At the heart of the matter was the possibility of reinstating a dynamic of regional mobility for students, which had dwindled since the 2000s. We saw the opportunity that a resumption of exchanges could represent, particularly for the reinforcement of bilingual teaching. The idea was to invigorate these schemes to make them more attractive.

Finally, as environmental awareness remains a major issue and challenge in our 3 countries, it was natural for us to propose a project that would enable students to discover initiatives in the service of eco-responsibility.

The aim is to initiate reflection on environmental preservation and eco-responsible practices. We want to raise awareness of these issues among French-speaking young people, as there are major ecological issues at stake in our respective countries.

What does the project consist of and what audience(s) does it involve?

The project involves offering around 30 high school students, accompanied by two or three teachers for each country, a cycle of three mobilities to Laos, Vietnam, then Cambodia, so that they can discover green initiatives, driven by NGOs, companies or research centers.

The aim is to initiate a reflection on environmental preservation and ecoresponsible practices. We want to raise awareness of these issues among French-speaking young people, as there are major ecological issues at stake in our respective countries. There are many initiatives by NGOs and French research centers such as the IRD and CIRAD that are being set up, but which students don't necessarily know about. So the first challenge is to communicate about existing, innovative solutions, and make them resonate with our audiences.

We have chosen to target mainly Première-equivalent classes: the students there are autonomous enough to appreciate the best of the mobilities, and will still be able, next year,to redeploy in the bilingual class network the good practices acquired thanks to this project.

Each four-day session will offer a variety of initiatives, conveying a fairly broad vision of what ecoresponsibility can be. Among the activities on offer are visits to green businesses, participation in a "Climate Fresco" workshop. In Vietnam, the NGO Trash Heroes will be organizing a waste harvest, a fabric recycling workshop and the discovery of green itineraries cycled on bicycles made from bamboo in the Mekong Delta. On the outskirts of Vientiane, students will be asked to make plates and food boxes from banana leaves, a traditional technique and a real alternative to plastic. They will also meet with the Mekong river commission, which is an intergovernmental organization for dialogue and regional cooperation in the lower Mekong basin, in charge of managing water resources for the sustainable development of the region.

If we want French to continue to be learned and arouse the interest of young people, we need to show that it's a useful language, a language of the future, opening up prospects both personally and professionally.

With France hosting the XIXth Francophonie Summit in the autumn, 2024 is proving to be a key time for promoting the French language and Francophone cultures. Accompanied by an exclusive Francophone Festival, the meeting of heads of states and governments sharing the French language doubles as an invitation to "repair, reinvent and re-enchant the world".

What picture can be drawn of the situation of French in the countries involved in the project?

Our three countries have in common education systems that still offer French language teaching in a reinforced way. But if we want French to continue to be learned and arouse the interest of young people, we need to show that it is a useful language, a language of the future, opening up both personal and professional prospects.

For this cycle of exchanges, the language of communication will be French. This is the language shared by the three bilingual schemes, which offer French-language teaching of Disciplines Non Linguistiques (DNL) such as biology, physics, chemistry and mathematics. Students will have a minimum level of B1, enabling them to interact with and understand the French-speaking experts involved. Their first languages being Lao, Khmer, or Vietnamese, French will intervene as a hyphen between all.

Through the "Refaire le monde en français" project, we want to show that French is a useful language, able to carry innovative and green initiatives. To achieve this, we will be working in collaboration with the AUF's French-speaking employability centers, which support students in their professional integration. The French language is first and foremost an added value to employability.

French here is a concrete tool for transforming the world.

How is your project an invitation to repair, reinvent and re-enchant the world?

In Southeast Asia, as in many other parts of the world for that matter, what needs to be reenchanted first and foremost is the environment. By placing the French language at the service of this cause, we want to propose to repair the students' environment - or at least, more modestly, the vision they have of it -, damaged by plastic pollution. The aim is also to reinvent their perception of French, to arouse their interest by enabling them to take a fresh look at the language and the world. Here, French is a concrete tool for transforming the world. Finally, the prospect of reenchantment lies in discovering ambitious initiatives, both large and small-scale. Young people don't necessarily have the opportunity to travel. We hope that this cycle of mobilities will also be an opportunity to re-enchant their world, to enable them to see that somewhere else does exist. In order to understand the major challenges of global warming, students will also be asked to calculate their carbon footprint, and thus measure its impact.

The common thread running through the three rotating mobilities taking place in May, June and July is the environmental challenges facing the younger Francophone and Francophile generations. What are they in a regional context? What common issues do you face?

Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia share the Mekong River, which is heavily polluted. More generally, our three countries face a major plastic waste problem. Environmental awareness is slow to develop. It's still very common to see people throwing plastic bottles into the street or into nature. There's still a lot to be done, which is why we thought it would be interesting to federate mobilities around this issue. How to reduce waste, how to recycle it, are some of the questions that will be asked from May to July during the workshops.

What concrete initiatives do you plan to implement following this cycle of meetings?

The idea, in a nutshell, is that students will be able to share the knowledge they have acquired in the bilingual class scheme. This will be made possible by the deployment of the United School platform, a no-cost, secure online social network accessible to teachers and students worldwide, enabling geographically-distant classes to link up, and currently being trialed within the Lao-French bilingual classes.

After their 3 stays, the students who have become "green ambassadors" will be asked to draw up an action plan to be deployed within their respective schools, accompanied by their teachers. The teachers, for their part, will draw up an "educational suitcase" covering all the activities. We hope these actions will inspire other students to take an interest in environmental issues.