Loughborough Twinning Association

Epinal                   France
Schwäbisch Hall, Germany
Gembloux            Belgium
Zamość                 Poland.

and a Community Link with Bhavnagar in India.

The importance of Twinning

Wars have plagued Europe for thousands of years, culminating in massive destruction and many millions of deaths in the wars of the 20^th Century.

A determination to prevent the recurrence of the horrors of 1939-1945 war inspired the leaders of the nations of Europe to work for economic and political co-operation, which led ultimately to the formation of the European Union.

Similarly the leaders of the towns and cities of Europe formed links with Twin Towns across the continent to encourage an appreciation of the civic and personal lives of our fellow Europeans.

The EU has supported and sponsored Town Twinning since 1989 and supports around 11,000 twinning partnerships involving over 80,000 people. Find out more about EU support here

Never again will a British Prime Minister be able to say: "How horrible, fantastic it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing." (Chamberlain in September 1938, after the invasion of Czechoslovakia by German forces.)

Loughborough was one of the first Twin Towns, linking with Epinal in France more that 50 years ago, ten years later a link was formed with Schwäbisch Hall in Germany and later with Gembloux in Belgium and finally with Zamość in Poland following the expansion of the EU after the collapse of the communist government.

Our main activity is a programme of family exchanges. Each twin town sends a group to visit Loughborough and hosts a group from Loughborough in alternate years.

In addition we send and receive young people who seek work experience, there are official visits by the mayors and civic leaders, there are school exchanges, and sporting exchanges. There have been numerous bridge competitions between the twin towns, as well as visits by choirs and country dancing groups.

We have helped young people from our twin towns to see something of the UK. Tomek Kossowski and Marcin Grabski from Zamość spent six months working in and learning from our local authority and now hold senior positions in the administration of Zamość

Laura Moczarska has graduated with a degree in Finance and Accounting at Warwick University in the summer of 2008. She has now obtained a Master's degree at Maastricht University, and has a good job as a tax advisor with Ernst and Young in the city of London Agnieska Słiwa his now in her second year of a similar course at Nottingham University, both have been assisted by the Twinning Association

Contact Hazel Meredith 01509 212008 or creedmeredith@tiscali.co.uk for further details and an application form.

Recent Events

Earlier this year visited Gembloux in Belgium. We spent time in Namur and in Brussels and enjoyed good Belgian beer and food.

In July we had a visit from our friends from Schwäbisch Hall, and took them riding the trams at Crich, and visited Stratford on Avon.

In August we flew to Gdansk for a few days of exploring this fascinatiing city which has had such a troubled history. Then travelled from North to South of Poland by train (for a £20 ticket.) We visited Łańcut Castle and town of Chelm. Photographs of the visit can be seen at http://tinyurl.com/Gdansk-Zamosc-2009

In September a group travelled to Epinal for their Braderie and in December another group went for the St Nicolas festivities in Early December.

More details of these visits can be found in the Newsletter

January 2010 Edition

Future Events