March 2010

                                        Dear fellow members , dear friends

                                                  Haiti , yesterday . Chile today .

War after war , we can take action and find the ways to prevent and avoid wars ;

disease after disease , we can discover medical responds and prevent devastating diseases  ;

fears after fears ,we can screen the ideologies  and exorcise the illusions .

What about an Earthquake ? 

Such a different scale and such a different tragedy ; there is no technical issue to avoid it .

What we can set is about a better use of our human resources , by thinking and planning 

long term more sustainable reconstructions .

Anyway  ,as an additional tragedy nobody deserved ,the unpredictability of the facts 

meets the stupidity of the minds when we heard that “…Haiti est maudit… “ or that “ …

il ne faut pas donner aux associations Haitiennes …“ … Amazing comments still sprayed

by  some “ esprits petits bourgeois “ whose past generations made ( political ) profits with

wars , diseases  and  fears …and whose current networks gather under the baner of

" legion du deshonneur ".

Our small ,poorly funded Tampa Bay ‘ French Alliances which reacted positively and quickly

in the Haiti emergeny ‘situation did their best : maybe a drop in an ocean of needs ;

surely a miserable fight against the consequences of non end ‘ natural disasters  ;

but a respectable commitment we would like to follow with our Haitians friends of Tampa Bay .

By the way , from a perspective of cultural policy , we had to be “exemplaires “ :

 300.000 French people / 800.000 Haitian people in the USA ; please make the maths of our

French language expansion for the 3 next decades …when in the meanwhile our local officials

did not see neither anticipate the turn of the " International Baccalaureat  ' programs " in our

Florida's schools ...

 We were "exemplaires " ! And thanks , we 'll continue to be aware of turning our

French Alliances into Francophone Alliances  , as quick as possible.

Despite what we heard again ( " a more developped country doesn't need any help !" ) ,

Chile is like Haiti : a natural tragedy is already an human tragedy and we sincerely empathize

the pain and suffering of their peoples .

By the way, how many of our students are native from this South America

which still admires our French enlightment ‘ philosophy without considering its social

failures ?

Once again it’s not time to quote Voltaire or Camus about earthquakes or diseases

but  it's the right moment to encourage any trustfull initiative that would support a

promotion of the French language as a language of global culture .

There is more sense than ever to do so  , even if it is for free ; even if the local French business

comunity doesn't realize anymore how culture is a succesfull factor in management and how

a non ambiguous and clearly generous image of the Francophone 'world could be a positive card

in its local game .

Sincerely 

         03 03 2010 , Yves HAMARD , president .