Introduction
The Borough Council felt strongly that the Twinning weekend (1-4 August 2002) should include some efforts to explore new ways of working together. Thus the Loughborough Twinning Association, a voluntary body, set up a morning of presentations and discussions about community projects. The idea weas to hear about the most innovative, exciting - and successful community-based projects and see what examples we could follow with and between each of our towns.
The event was arranged the help of Chhaya McDonald of Charnwood Borough Council, Patrick Youell of Charnwood CVS and others; we are also endebted to Caroline Marshall and her team supporting the Mayor and the rest of the weekend. We hope the Forum will now deliver some interesting results in the future. The materials are mostly available in English or the language in which they have been provided. To help readers of other languages we have provided a link to an automatic translator, however, unfortunately Polish is not available (other than via www.poltran.com) and we accept the translation is, shall we say, imperfect. Other language copies are welcomed.
We hope everyone enjoyed the morning. The participants included representatives from five twin towns and other citizens of the Borough of all ages, at least one asylum seeker, and a group of students from China.
Several of Loughborough's twin towns are linked with each other - for example, Epinal with both Schwäbisch Hall and Gembloux, and Schwäbisch Hall with Zamosc. The Twinning Association feels that it was very useful to meet as a group of five towns and we would welcome an annual occasion when the five (or more) towns could meet for a similar discussions and to progress what we have done on this occasion.
Cllr Max Hunt
Chairman of Loughborough Twinning Association.