Mariette Delahaut

I am Mariette Delahaut, mission officer to the Minister.

The Minister, Antoine Humblet, had concluded an agreement with the Louisiana Department of Education to help address the decline of French, which was beginning to be lost. At that time, Louisiana requested that Belgium, Switzerland, France, and Quebec participate in preserving the French language and help teach it.

It turned out that there were secondary school teachers, but no primary school teachers, so I went at their request. Minister Humblet appointed me for this mission, and I left with 100 teachers—primary and secondary educators—for Louisiana. We traveled by military aircraft, very officially, to arrive in Louisiana.

I therefore had around one hundred teachers under my responsibility, spread throughout the entire state of Louisiana, from New Orleans to Shreveport, in the north of Louisiana, working in coordination with CODOFIL.