In Support of the Arts, the Humanities, and Education
Since 2018, La Renaissance Française, USA, has supported endeavors that raise awareness of the French language and francophone cultures among people living in the United States. Following are some of the projects to which we have had the honor of contributing.
2026 Alliance Française de Milwaukee Grant
The AF de Milwaukee is a thriving Alliance Française chapter in Wisconsin that, in addition to a wide variety of educational and cultural programs, offers extensive travel opportunities and a weekly radio show. It has recently initiated a Friendship City Relationship with the French city, Chasse-sur-Rhône, in the Auvergne Rhône Alpes Region, and plans to expand this relationship into a Sister City partnership this next year. As part of that collaboration, the AF de Milwaukee is preparing to participate in “a forward looking approach to cultural transmission,” Micro-Folie. This is a high definition digital platform that gives access to thousands of works in 12 French National Museums, e.g., Le Louvre, le Musée d’Orsay, Versailles, and le Centre Pompidou, etc. The members of the AF de Milwaukee will be able to discover and share the cultural identity of Chasse-sur-Rhône and foster the connections between their two cities by using the LRF grant to support the acquisition of the Micro-Folie equipment and perform the technical set-up.
2026 Alliance Française de Maine Grant
In the last ten years, dedicated volunteers have brought the AF du Maine back to life and the chapter continues to grow exponentially, doubling it’s revenue from 2024 to 2025 and quadrupling its budget surplus in that same time period. They welcomed ninety college, high school, and middle school students to their most recent film festival and have initiated, with support from the French government, a French Heritage Language Program that will be take place in a public school in Portland. With their very successful adult classes held online, the AF du Maine expects to use the LRF grant to defray the considerable expense of rental space for their children’s classes. Both the Heritage Language program and the children’s classes offer the opportunity to build interest in the study of French among parents and students at a time when even in New England, an area with a large French heritage population, enrollments are in decline and programs can be in danger.
Bernie Duhaime Student Scholarships
Following the sudden passing of Bernie Duhaime, President and Treasurer of the Délégation des États-Unis of La Renaissance Française, the 2025 LRF Grant was awarded to the Alliance Française Omaha to support the “Bernie Duhaime Student Scholarships," which will offer French students ongoing opportunities for language and cultural enrichment, the very activities for which Bernie was an exceptional champion.
French Teaching Fast Track
In 2023, the LRF contribution to the Albertine Foundation supported the Multi-State Pathways to Teaching French initiative, now known as French Teaching Fast Track, which was created to address the shortage of French teachers in the U.S. Each year a group of native and advanced French speakers living in the U.S. are recruited to participate in 70 hours of online coursework to give them a start along the pathway to K-12 teaching certification in their state.
Talented actor and director, André Nerman, shares his in-depth knowledge of the great French playwright, Molière. Presented by Fédération des Alliances Françaises USA thanks to the Jane M. & Bruce P. Robert Charitable Foundation and La Alliances Française.
The Colette Project, Sarasota
Provocative and prolific, the French writer Colette (1873-1954) was a novelist, journalist, and actress, a liberated woman in a changing France. In 2020, the centennial of her 1920 novel, Chéri, events were organized in a variety of venues throughout the community, including the New College of Florida, to celebrate Colette's love of literature, music, cats and dogs, food, and flowers."
American Women Rebuilding France
Anne Morgan, the daughter of banker John Pierpont Morgan undertook the great challenge of helping to rebuild France after the Great War. The exhibition, "American Women Rebuilding France, 1917-1924," includes thirty-one photographs from the WWI era as well as silent film footage that depicts the exceptional efforts by American women to help the civilian population in northeastern France. La Renaissance Française supported this installation of this exhibit at the University of Omaha Kaneko Library in Omaha, NE in 2019.
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Exhibit Dates: February-March 2020. New College of Florida, Sarasota, FL
Exhibit Dates: March 2019
University of Omaha Kaneko Library, Omaha, NE
Talented actor and director, André Nerman, shared his in-depth knowledge of the great French playwright, Molière, in this presentation organized by the Fédération des Alliances Françaises USA in 2021 with the support of the Jane M. & Bruce P. Robert Charitable Foundation.
About Our Grants
We have made a yearly grant to organizations who make possible projects relating to French Culture or French Language. We will consider requests from other 501(c)3 organizations.
