Good morning, everyone. Thanks to committee members for this opportunity to present Francophone Hospitality in Manitoba to you. I've been the Francophone Hospitality manager since the organization was created in December 2003. I'm just going to present the hospitality structure and services.
Francophone Hospitality, which is funded by Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the Province of Manitoba, is a Franco-Manitoban community initiative. Earlier Ibrahima mentioned that, in 2001, when immigrants began settling in the community, the community got together to decide what we were going to do. What were we going to do to integrate them into the Franco-Manitoban community?
That's where the entire issue started and it was from that moment that the structure of Francophone Hospitality was put in place. At the time, in December 2003, there was one person and the structure quietly evolved. Today, we have some 13 employees at Francophone Hospitality. When the centre opened, we took in 30 immigrants. Now the organization receives about 350 immigrants a year.
What classes of immigrants do we take in? We take in landed immigrants, including economic immigrants, those who apply through the federal and provincial programs to come and settle here. They have chosen Manitoba or Canada as their destination country. We're talking about refugees and international students who are at the Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface who are finishing and who want to apply for permanent residence in Manitoba. So we're talking about these three clienteles. There are also visitors who come from time to time to gather information on the immigration component. We give them the information and present Manitoba to them. If they so decide, they can settle there.
The Francophone Hospitality program is spread over four weeks, when an immigrant arrives in Manitoba. In the first week, there is the welcome at the airport. What makes our program special is that the approach is very much based on the clients and the assistance and support we can provide them. When immigrants arrived, we used to give them brochures and documents that we asked them to read and then we asked them to get oriented. We've realized that's not what helps immigrants. They need assistance and support, regardless of immigrant class. We took the clients and we made them our central concern. We asked ourselves what they needed on arrival so that they could appreciate the community, get to know it and know what is offered there to assist them in integrating. It was by focusing on the client that we built the Francophone Hospitality service.
First, we go and welcome them at the airport. It turns out we've already been in contact with them. Then we make a reservation for them at the hotel or find them housing, where they can stay temporarily while we go and assist them in administrative matters—everything they have to do in relation to the act, the rules of Canadian society and to know exactly what there is.
Second, we accompany them in the community and with services to establish a connection between them and the services in that community, particularly in the francophone community. All immigrants who arrive at our centres are francophone. They are unilingual. We know that being unilingual in a anglophone majority province is a challenge. They have to learn the language. It's very important for them to know what resources are available in their community and to which they have access to facilitate their integration. We try to create that connection as soon as possible. All that's done in the second week.
In the third week, we sit down with the immigrants to establish objectives. We look at what motivated them to come to Manitoba. If there is a reason, we try to define the objectives they would like to achieve. Why did they immigrate to Canada? We check that with the clients. We look at the short, medium and long terms. We try to make a plan with the immigrants.
We do all that through our follow-up program, which is developed. After one month, three months, six months and a year, we follow up with the clients to see how far they've gone in their immigration effort. We try to determine whether their integration is going well, whether it's not going well or whether they're encountering challenges.
How can we help them with those challenges so that things go well? That's the follow-up program we've developed.