On May 31, 2018, a packed Grand Salon Hall of the University of Alberta, St. Jean Campus, witnessed the 2018 Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Centre d’Accueil et d’Etablissement (CAE). Led by Canada 150 Senate Medal decorated Executive Director, Georges Bahaya, and Board Chair, Paul Dubé, they celebrated some of the accomplishments for the year. CAE is now a charity, armed with the abily to recieve charitable donations and issue receipts. It opened a new branch in the North of Edmonton in partnership with the Mennonite Centre for Newcomers, it started an English Conversation Circle, a Homework Club and a Travelling Agent to help newcomers establish in towns around the Fort McMurray area.
When a guest arrives at your home to spend a couple of hours or days, you make sure the guest is comfortable, show bedroom if need be, show the washroom, prepare food, and give your guest a befitting VIP treatment.
When this guest comes to your house to not just spend a couple of hours or days, but to become part of your family, you certainly will go the extra mile to not only make them comfortable, but to help them meet your friends, help them connect with family and friends, help them find a job and eventually outgrow your family, and move into their own home. Surely help them live happily ever after.
Centre d’Accueil et d’Etablissement (CAE) of Northern Alberta in short, CAE, is that family that receives French-speaking guests every year who have come to join the Albertan Family. They received close to 2,000 guests last year; you may call them francophone newcomers in their three locations; Edmonton, Fort McMurray and Grande Prairie. They provide permanent residents, refugees, protected persons, family class and economic class French-speaking newcomers with settlement and integration services in French, in partnership with other local agencies.
CAE brought home a total of 1.8 million Dollars pumped in from various sources, an increase by about a third of a million Dollars from 2017. The organization is now a charity with ability to receive donations and issue receipts. It has opened a new branch in the North of Edmonton in partnership with the Mennonite Centre for Newcomers, the English Conversation Circle, a Homework Club and a Travelling Agent to help newcomers establish in towns around the Fort McMurray area.
There are certainly challenges for a French-speaking person to settle in an English speaking region of the country but CAE Board Chair has some appreciation for all those who have made it this far, “…Your presence here this evening is an obvious sign of the commitment and the interest which you grant to the cause of Francophone newcomers who, every year choose our community to enrich it with their lives, their experience, and their commitment…,” Paul Dubé, Board Chair of CAE.
