Hi

I am from the Billinghay and District Twinning Association and we are twinned with a small village in France called Ballon. We both have about 2000 inhabitants.

We are investigating the possibility of some sort of 3 way twinning with another village, of a similar size, possibly from one of the new member states of the EU.

I wondered if anyone had had any experience of this and could they let me know how they have got on?

Our twinning association is split on this, with some wanting to keep things the same. We have agreed though to look at the idea and then give the members the information and let them decide. To keep our grant though we must change and become more inclusive and encourage new twinning. It’s how we do this, and keep all our members, and encourage new ones, that is the problem!

Any information and experiences would be very helpful.

Thanks

Fil

Hallo Fil,

Thanks for the post, I have just been having an enjoyable time reading through your website. very interesting and some amusing writers.

At the Sandy Twinning Association we have been twinned with France for just over 25 years, but 11 years ago we received a request from Poland for a link.

We also had some members who wanted to keep the situation as it stood, ie. just twinned with France, but there was sufficient interest in Poland for us to investigate the possibilities.

As Chairman at that time I appointed Max Hill, Head Teacher at our local Upper School to form a sub-committee (consisting of a few other committee members and others who were interested) to follow up the request.

Although we never (deliberately) made the Polish link a full twinning, it has in many ways been as successful, if not more, than the French Twinning link. After a while, the two committees merged into one dealing with both links, however, following this year we expect to seperate once more into two seperate committees (some people serving on both) for various logistical reasons.

We do have members who are interested only in one link or the other, however, we do tend to support each other in many ways.

I feel that this extension of our International activites has only been of benefit to the town as a whole, and to the members.

you can read about the Polish link within the pages of our main website by following these links:-
http://www.towntwinning.org.uk/skarszewy.htm
http://www.towntwinning.org.uk/summer%20schools.htm
http://www.towntwinning.org.uk/Archive%20-...isit%201996.htm
http://www.towntwinning.org.uk/Archive%20-...andy%202003.htm
http://www.towntwinning.org.uk/Archive%20-...zewy%202007.htm

There is more, however, I think this will show that the link has been successful and has also brought many language benefits to the Polish Community especially.

My opinion is, give it whirl, I am sure you will not regret it.

Alan

I'm from Reigate & Banstead and we have two twins Eschweiler in Germany and Brunoy in France. We have had several joint weekends and have also been to several in Eschweiler where we have met their French twins from Wattrelos. We are now considering a further link with Wattrelos ourselves. In my view it's much better to have two groups together and not much more work to organise. We have one main committee and two sub-groups and some people only work with one country although most of us do both
Janet

In my earlier post I mentioned that some of the committee members were only interested in one link or the other, the biggest problem came recently when we considered merging the accounts for the two links which brought some objections from one or two committee members who claimed they had only joined up for the French twinning and were concerned that the French monies would be spent on the Polish link.

In order to restore the peace we have decided to reinstate the two seperate sub-committees with their own financial obligations, but both reporting to the main committee.

Despite this, we do have many people in our membership who are not only involved with the official links but also have many private links and visits to both countries.

I still personally believe in as much international cooperation as a town can support. Although I no longer live in Sandy, but still on the committee after about 22/23 years, I would like to see further links, but am fully aware that the town could not support any more at this stage. We do have to be realistic about these things and submerge personal feelings until such time as the conditions are ripe.

Alan

Thank you for the replies, they are all very interesting and positive.

I don't think the use of funds would be an issue, at least at the moment, as nearly every year we have been successful in getting our grant. We don't do much fund raising as we all pay so much per head for the coach to France every other year and it is subsidised by the grant. One of the reasons we are looking at a 3 way twinning is to be able to continue getting our grant, as it is our belief that we will need to do so in order to keep getting the grant. We feel the grant is one way of attracting new members as it keeps the cost of visiting our families down. In these hard times every little helps! Of course if we did not get the grant and had to fund raise more vigarously then I can see it could become an issue!

In what direction do other twinning groups feel the grant situation is moving? We try to be as inclusive as possible and actively encourage membership from disadvantaged social groups including people with disabilities and minority ethnic groups although we have found it difficult to encourage membership from these groups.

How do other associations encourage participation from minority groups? We feel we have a lot to offer by extending peoples horizens and sharing the wonderful times we have had in France, with our families, to groups who might not otherwise be able to travel easily or be welcomed, as we have been, into peoples homes and to share their lives, albiet for a few days. Surely an uplifting experiance that ought to be shared with disadvantaged groups?

I look forward to hearing from you, we are just looking and evaluating the prospects at the moment, with a view to reporting back to our members so they can decide in which direction we move, or not at all, whichever the case may be!

Thanks

Fil