KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

The Al­liance Française of T&T (AFTT) wel­comed fam­i­lies, stu­dents, and cul­tur­al en­thu­si­asts on Sep­tem­ber 20 for its an­nu­al French Open Day, cel­e­brat­ing the rich­ness of the French lan­guage and cul­ture.

Any­ka Batista, Di­rec­tor of AFTT, said the event marked the of­fi­cial start of the 2025/2026 aca­d­e­m­ic term of French cours­es.

“Reg­is­tra­tion is still open for a lim­it­ed num­ber of spots, of­fer­ing learn­ers of all ages and lev­els the chance to em­bark on or con­tin­ue their French jour­ney,” she said. “Dis­tance is no is­sue, as class­es are of­fered on­line or in per­son at 17 Al­cazar Street, St Clair.”

Found­ed in 1951, AFTT is ded­i­cat­ed to pro­mot­ing the French lan­guage through ed­u­ca­tion, cul­tur­al pro­gram­ming, and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­change. Batista not­ed that the To­ba­go branch is thriv­ing, with grow­ing en­roll­ment for adult be­gin­ners and chil­dren as young as five, along­side a vi­brant cul­tur­al cal­en­dar and a rep­u­ta­tion as the hub for French learn­ing in the re­gion.

High­lights of the French Open Day in­clud­ed a cap­ti­vat­ing ren­di­tion of La Vie en Rose by vo­cal­ist Jeriyah de Souza, a live­ly Pa­tois work­shop with Nnam­di Hodge, in­ter­ac­tive French class­es led by Syl­vain Leblanc, and cre­ative Parisian pa­per­craft with Jour­nal Junkie TT.

Guests al­so en­joyed pre­sen­ta­tions on teach­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties in France with Amaiya Car­ring­ton, in­spir­ing art ses­sions with Sonya Ram­je­w­an and Genis­sia Grif­fith, and the pop­u­lar French Café fea­tur­ing crêpes, madeleines, and croque-mon­sieur sand­wich­es pre­pared by Meli­na Krim.

A fam­i­ly-friend­ly Kids’ Cor­ner of­fered games and short films, while Ran­dolph Forde manned the in­for­ma­tion booth, wel­com­ing vis­i­tors and an­swer­ing ques­tions about AFTT’s cours­es and cul­tur­al pro­grammes. At­ten­dees could al­so pur­chase au­then­tic French sou­venirs sourced di­rect­ly from Paris, still avail­able at the Al­liance Française.

AFTT col­lab­o­rates with the Al­liances Français­es | East­ern Caribbean Net­work, lo­cal and na­tion­al gov­ern­ments, and var­i­ous ed­u­ca­tion­al and cor­po­rate as­so­ci­a­tions to main­tain its sta­tus as the gold stan­dard for French-lan­guage ed­u­ca­tion and cul­tur­al pro­gram­ming in the re­gion.