PREMIERE EVENTS
Saint Louis-Lyon Sister Cities' La Fete du Beaujolais Nouveau XXII
Saint Louis-Lyon Sister Cities held their annual La Fete du Beajolais Nouveau dinner at the Racquet Club Ladue on Friday, November 21, 2008. The dinner is the annual fundraiser for scholarships and programs. Howard Nason and Stanley Goodman are generally regarded as the godfathers of the jumelage of St. Louis and Lyon. In their professional lives, Nason, a scientist, was director of research at the Monsanto Corporation and Goodman, a businessman and an accomplished violinist, was an executive of the May company. Both men were ardent francophiles and traveled extensively in France. They were also grand connoisseurs of wine and were especially fond of the Beaujolais region. Sometime in the early 1970's they were inspired to propose the twinning of St. Louis and Lyon and sold the idea to then Mayor John Poelker. The agreement was signed in 1975. Simply put, the raison d’être for the Saint Louis-Lyon Sister Cities and all other sister-city relationships around the world is people-to-people diplomacy. In keeping with this idea, advanced originally by President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950’s, our Comité du Jumelage (Board of Directors) organizes annually family-to-family summer exchanges of high-school students and also one-week hosted visits of adults. In the adult program, started in 2000, the Comité cooperates with a program called the Université Tous Ages (UTA) based at the Université de Lyon II (Université Lumière).This past summer 2007, for instance, a group of nine of our members spent a week in Lyon living in the homes of and traveling with UTA members. Next summer, a group of UTAers will be invited to spend a week here hosted by our Sister City members, and so it will alternate from year to year. Improving Cultural Understanding and the Integration of Minorities through Franco-American Partnerships is a two-year commitment of four U.S. and four French cities paired in an effort to address issues regarding marginalized populations. The St. Louis and Lyon delegations are comprised of experts and volunteers dedicated to promoting cultural diversity and interfaith understanding, fostering civic engagement and furthering the integration of disadvantaged populations into the local economy. |
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