Do French and Span­ish in­trigue and in­spire you? Do you have an in­nate de­sire to trav­el around the Caribbean, learn­ing about the dif­fer­ent cul­tures and so­ci­eties in the French and Span­ish is­lands? Well then REPE­RIO is for you! Repe­rio, mean­ing 'dis­cov­er' in Latin, is a pro­gramme which was launched in Oc­to­ber 2010 that aims to pro­duce a group of stu­dents who will be able to ful­ly grasp the re­al­i­ties of their Caribbean coun­ter­parts, in a lan­guage oth­er than their na­tive tongue. It was es­tab­lished by Jere An­drews, Vice Pres­i­dent of the Al­liance Fran­caise with the hope that through it, stu­dents would be­come flu­ent in an­oth­er lan­guage, while ap­pre­ci­at­ing their cul­ture and the cul­tures of oth­ers even more.

An­drews said, "the pro­gramme stems from my love of cul­ture and lan­guage which are so in­ter­re­lat­ed. Mul­ti­lin­gual­ism plays an im­por­tant role in the Caribbean. One of­ten gets the im­pres­sion that there are sev­er­al 'Caribbeans', the Eng­lish-speak­ing, the Span­ish-speak­ing, the Dutch-speak­ing. I want­ed to make stu­dents more aware of these oth­er is­lands and the lan­guages that are spo­ken on these oth­er is­lands.'

The pro­gramme re­al­ly aims to strength­en re­gion­al re­la­tions which An­drews be­lieves will ul­ti­mate­ly re­sult in the fa­cil­i­ta­tion of cul­tur­al work­shops and ex­change pro­grammes around the re­gion. Cur­rent­ly the pro­gramme is trilin­gual in fo­cus: Eng­lish, French and Span­ish. How­ev­er, one of the ma­jor dif­fer­ences be­tween this and oth­er pro­grammes like it, is that it does not seek to spread mul­ti­lin­gual­ism on­ly among stu­dents who study lan­guages. Recog­nis­ing the need for the Caribbean so­ci­ety on a whole to be mul­ti­lin­gual, Repe­rio en­cour­ages stu­dents pur­su­ing Busi­ness, Nat­ur­al Sci­ences or Earth Sci­ences to par­tic­i­pate. As such, this year they have launched a French-Caribbean ini­tia­tive un­der which some 250 Trinida­di­an stu­dents from var­i­ous schools around the coun­try vis­it­ed Guade­loupe from April 17th to 24th 2011.

The stu­dents spent their time im­mersed in the cul­ture and lan­guage of their French Caribbean neigh­bours. They learnt about the coun­try's in­sti­tu­tions, his­to­ry, met pub­lic of­fi­cials, par­tic­i­pat­ed in work­shops and cre­at­ed friend­ships while tour­ing the French de­part­ment. An­drews hopes that Repe­rio will en­cour­age stu­dents to cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for them­selves with re­spect to trav­el­ling and learn­ing about the dif­fer­ent cul­tures and lan­guages present in the Caribbean. In ad­di­tion, the stu­dents will soon pub­lish a mag­a­zine us­ing con­tent gained dur­ing their trip.

With re­spect to fund­ing, most of the par­tic­i­pants pay for them­selves while oth­ers seek spon­sor­ship from dif­fer­ent or­gan­i­sa­tions. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, two schol­ar­ships were of­fered based on the re­sults of a French es­say com­pe­ti­tion. The two schol­ar­ship win­ners were An­niesha Noel of St George's Col­lege and Re­nee Mar­tin of Bish­op Anstey High School, Port-of-Spain. An­drews hopes that in the fu­ture, it will be pos­si­ble to af­ford many more stu­dents the op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate de­spite fi­nan­cial con­straints. As it is a Caribbean project, the stu­dents will be is­land hop­ping over the next few years and oth­er Caribbean stu­dents will vis­it Trinidad. An­drews says "We ex­pect to cre­ate a gen­er­a­tion of youth who, when they leave sec­ondary school, are as fa­mil­iar with the oth­er is­lands as they are with their neigh­bour­hood!"

While the gen­er­al rule is that stu­dents get in­volved in the pro­gramme through their sec­ondary school, one can be­come a mem­ber in­de­pen­dent­ly by call­ing 669-3917. The on­ly re­quire­ment is that stu­dents be cu­ri­ous and high­ly mo­ti­vat­ed be­cause though the pro­grammes are re­ward­ing, they are al­so very in­ten­sive. The Vice Pres­i­dent hopes that Repe­rio will have a last­ing im­pact (on the par­tic­i­pants) which will be felt not on­ly lo­cal­ly, but re­gion­al­ly with per­sons be­com­ing more con­scious of lo­cal and Caribbean iden­ti­ty. She be­lieves that this aware­ness will boost the re­gion on a whole, as per­sons will ap­pre­ci­ate their cul­ture more and have the abil­i­ty to speak more than one lan­guage flu­ent­ly.

Repe­rio would not be pos­si­ble with­out a num­ber of per­sons and en­ti­ties such as Li­at, the French Em­bassy, Dem­ming Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny and the Hy­att Re­gency. An op­por­tu­ni­ty like this should def­i­nite­ly be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly! De­spite the fact that learn­ing a for­eign lan­guage in this day and age is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant, many times, as Trinida­di­an teenagers we take the fact that we have so many dif­fer­ent cul­tures and lan­guages present in our re­gion for grant­ed. Whether you study lan­guages, or are in­ter­est­ed in be­com­ing mul­ti­lin­gual, Repe­rio is the per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pand your knowl­edge and meet new peo­ple. It is not too ear­ly to start think­ing about par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Span­ish Ini­tia­tive set for Ju­ly 2011!

Paige An­drew

Se­nior Press Pass Cor­re­spon­dent

St. Joseph's Con­vent, Port-of-Spain