Testimony given for the 15th Anniversary of the Franco-American Women's Institute:

Why FAWI? FAWI reveals the rich tapestry of the Franco‐American women’s experience, states Margaret Langford, Ph.D., Keene State College.
FAWI was instrumental to me really appreciating where I come from. So much so, I made the trip of my lifetime to France at the end of March this year.--Barbara A. Ouellette, Honors College, UM
"As a board member of the Old Canada Road Historical Society in Bingham, I believe FAWI is an essential part of the preservation of Franco-American women's history, and the cultivation of new voices in the FAW experience.” -- Martha Sterling-Golden, past president of the Women's Campaign School at Yale University.
In my mind, my heart and my writings, I constantly shuttle between the French and the American shores. F.A.W.I. formed a bridge joining the two shores. I received an e-mail message from Gerard’s son, telling me that he and his sister had read my story online, “Rue de voleurs” on F.A.W.I., and that they were moved to read about their grandparents, whom one barely knew and the other not at all. --Michelle Barany was born in Paris, but grew up in La Rochelle, now lives in California.
“FAWI helps keep the culture alive both by honoring the past and by encouraging future work. It has supported my writing for years and continues to do so.”-- Maureen Perry, Reference Librarian, USM, Poet
FAWI’s website stands as beacon of justice and morality. FAWI published my research, “Reclaiming Eve: A Pro-Choice Ethic for Catholic Women” vastly broadened its reach beyond its academic grounding.-- Melissa MacCrae, M.A., Owner, Spin A Yarn, Brewer, ME
The most important thing that FAWI has done for me has been to connect me with my heritage, a heritage that my Franco-American mother had tried to reject, had tried to hide, in order to be part of the mainstream even though she never lost her French accent. -- Joyce Laverty Miller, Dallas, TX, daughter of Marie Lucie Gravelle.
The FAWI website is fabulous in that I can keep up with what is happening in Franco culture today.--Pamela Morneault Gemme, Poet
FAWI’s website community motivated me to conduct twenty years of genealogical and bilingual historical research and I wrote a four-book Quebecois Series depicting our common ancestral experience in Acadia and Nouvelle France from the mid-1600s through 1763,-- Doris Provencher Faucher, Biddeford, Author
This place, FAWI, created in the physical and virtual worlds gives me a sense of psychological place as French-French Canadian-Franco-American-Acadian. It witnesses and validates our contributions.-- Ann Forcier
Because of the research I do on Franco-Americans, I find the FAWI website particularly useful for its up-to-date and very extensive bibliography of sources that I can drew upon. The website has literally hundreds of links to help anyone doing research on Franco-Americans.-- Michael.Guignard, Ph.D., Alexandria, VA, Author
I concluded that others, and I, had put our memories and culture in mothballs to protect them until there was a place to safely air them. And behold, there was FAWI at the top of my Internet search. And there were memories like mine! Some written in French, some in English, some in both. Both!—Ann Marie Staples, Author, Dover High School, Dover, NH.
Without the online existence of FAWI, I would have felt much more alone in my search for roots. Reading all the site's posts connected me to years of memories that I claimed as a heritage that didn't exist for me beyond my immediate family.-- Cecile Poulin, Poet, Author.
FAWI really opened my eyes to the diversity in Maine and gave me a first-hand view into the lives of Franco-American women-- Phyllis Vonherrlich, Augusta Women's History Trail, Maine Studies, UM