As the aroma of freshly made crepes filled the hallway of the Academic Services building, students learned about French history through poster boards and student presentations as they walked around the Francophonie festival held by the French Club on Saturday.
The festival was a collaboration between the Cal State Long Beach French Department, Teaching Associate program and the Department of Romance, German, Russian Languages and Literature.
The Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, known as Francophonie to the public, is a cultural festival that is an internationally known organization. Francophonie represents countries and regions that speak French.
The Francophonie featured a crepe station where students could get a freshly made crepe, French music, an international luncheon and an induction ceremony for students being inducted into the French Honors Society.
Along the walls were posters depicting fun French facts such as the geographical location of France, also known as the Hexagon, as well as the history of the Louvre, the world’s largest museum located in Paris. The posters were accompanied by presentations from the students in the French program that featured their experiences studying abroad in France.
Cedric Joseph Oliva, the language program coordinator of RGRLL, has made Francophonie an annual event for the past four years.
“The Francophonie was created originally to protect, preserve and push countries to keep on using the French language but also celebrates diversity, and only recently, in the last 15 years, has Francophonie been celebrated throughout the world,” Oliva said.
Oliva said he hopes to make Francophonie larger in the future and to show students the many different countries that speak French around the world.
“We had students and professors come from Santa Barbara last year and I’m hoping Francophonie here on campus becomes an epicenter of French culture in California,” Oliva said.
Aparna Nayak, the program director and French advisor at CSULB, also tries to find ways to spread student’s passion for the language and the culture of French.
“Francophonie is important for many different reasons such as students bonding and supporting each other, but also it’s our opportunity to reach out to the rest of the campus community and outside community,” Nayak said.
The Francophonie event is a public event that brings in students from the community, including from local high schools.
Kristian Farrokh-Siar, a French instructor and adviser for the French Honors Society at Los Alamitos High School, attended the event along with her high school honors students on Saturday.
“We do this every year, try to spread their love of French and the Francophonie is a great platform for that,” Farrokh-Siar said. “Dr. Oliva and I are old friends so when he started Francophonie I thought it was a great idea for my students to be exposed to the different French speaking countries that exist.”
Farrokh-Siar further said that attending Francophonie helps her students with their understanding of the French language to university students visiting from France or different French-speaking countries.
“For my students, they love being able to speak French to someone else that isn’t me,” Farrokh-Siar said. “So they get excited when they are able to speak to the university students here and find out how taking French is at CSULB and how their taking French furthers their studies.”
“We’ve had fundraisers, cultural festivals, movie nights and bonfires for students to bond but also share their love of the French language,” Nayak said.
Nayak says that Francophonie helps all different students understand French ideals and the study of the language.
Nayak said, “It helps us think about the world in different ways; it teaches us about our connections, not just with Europe but with the larger French-speaking world which is in Africa, Asia [and] South America.”