Sophie in Annecy

Sophie Franklin took time out from her Easter break with her family in France to visit Cheltenham's twin town of Annecy for us. Here is her report:

In view of the difficulty in getting to correspond with our Annecy counterpart at the Borough offices, Morgan asked me to go and see what I could find out on the ground, which I did.

I had found out that there is an officer solely working on the environment for the town of Annecy, so I knocked on the door of the municipal Offices and asked to speak to him.

Unfortunately, he was away on a course, but the receptionist was very friendly and helpful and I promised I would contact him by email on my return.

In the morning, I also tried to speak to someone at FRAPNA, but they are a Federation of local associations which deal with all sorts of local environmental problems, but really nothing that matches up with Cheltenham.

So I then went to Prioriterre, with whom I had established contact before going and who were really hospitable and helpful. Prioriterre is an Annecy organisation trying to empower people to protect the environment in whichever way they want, green buildings principally and renewable energy, through consultations, talks to schools and colleges, etc.

Prioriterre’s new building is carbon neutral, even better, it produces more energy than it needs. Even the armchair in the reception area are made of cardboard... Very comfortable too, but the staff don’t think they will last very long, not the perfect sitting room armchair as it might age rather quickly!

I explained what we did and that we wanted to establish links with like-minded organisations, especially in order to organise exchanges between young people. They said they would certainly find youngsters interested in going abroad to one of our partner organisations, like Kisumu, and also possibly to go to our next Youth conference in Slovakia.

I met Anne Hughet, who does not speak much English but some of her colleagues do, so future contacts should be easy.

Their web address is: http://www.prioriterre.org with a couple of pages in English.

Anne also gave me the address of another organisation “La Terre en Heritage”, specialising in sustainable consumption. I really look forward to finding out more at a later date.