I am a newbie to the site. I am Nicholas Goodwin, Vice Chairman of the Exeter-Yaroslavl Twinning Association, that is Yaroslavl Russia.

I found the comments of others on encouraging young people interesting.

What is the consensus concerning accepting minors in inward groups. Do othyer groups allow it, and if so under what conditions?

This has become something of an issue with us and the whole questions is being tabled for our AGM in September. If I give you some history you may understand the position.

A couple of years ago we had a minor (a boy) in a group from Russia whose parents had appointed a guardian to look after them. Unfortunately prior to the actual visit the minor's family had had his ticket extended by an extra week without our knowledge, so promptly at the end of the official twinning visit he announced that he was staying on for an extra week. Naturally this caused us a great deal of problems, especially as the guardian was not staying in Exeter with him, but was going to Scotland on an organised tour. Suffice to say that members of the committee stepped in as usual and arranged hosting, entertainment and travel back to Heathrow, so all was OK in the end.

Now we have the situation that part of the committee involved in this matter wish to avoid any such an experience happening again, and their main thinking so far is to restrict the inclusion of minors to those who also have parents or family in the group. Unfortunately, Russian families are not rich so cannot afford to buy two tickets. Also, we have supported the teaching of English to young people in Russia (14 to 18 years of age) by giving prizes for Regional competitions. These prizes have been nominal from us, but the Russian school concerned gives a free trip to Exeter as part of the yearly inward twinning group. If the thinking so far is accepted, it will put an end to this link as the children from the school are from all walks of life, and most of their parents would not be able to pay for another ticket.

It is a knot. But my personal feeling is that one bad experience does not mean that all will be bad. My feeling is that by imposing such a rule we will exclude a section of our twin town's population, and a major section of future members in our twin town's twinning organisation, which would inevitably have the knock-on effect at our end. In addition, I feel we could also be viewed as discriminatory, not only by age, but also by economic ability.

What to others think? What would they do in our situation?

Hello Nick,

First, may I welcome you to the board, secondly, my apologies for the delay in your post appearing within these pages, due to some recent spamming of the boards all new members now have to go through a moderation process before their post appears, you will find that your future posts will be published immediately you submit them.

Thank you for flagging up what could well be a problem for some groups involved with twin towns from the poorer countries. In my personal opinion you did the right thing on this occasion, but I do feel that some diplomatic consultation with the Russian side of your link would be advisable to avoid future misunderstandings.

We at Sandy have been involved with Poland for the past 10 years and are well aware of the financial situation in the Eastern Bloc, and their occcasional misunderstanding of the limits of what towntwinning can involve.

It would be interesting to hear if anyone else has any comment to make on this matter.

The subject if open to all to contribute their opinions