Welcome to the UK Town Twinning Portal
www.towntwinning.org.uk
A portal to the world of Twinning, open to all UK "Twinners".
This is the site for everyone interested in Town Twinning activities within the United Kingdom. The place to find out about your local twinning groups, to discover how to contact your local association and who they are twinned with.
For current and potential twinning groups this is the place to discover how to go about setting up a twinning link, and where to go to find a potential twinning partner, to check current information concerning twinning, travel information, and useful links..
This site also includes an article section which contains factual and “how to” articles, feature articles, and amusing stories, a news section about the activities of British groups and a recipe section for you to submit your favourite international receipes..
Other features are planned for introduction as the site grows. In other words, it is intended that this will develop into a “one stop” centre for all twinning matters.
The Forums are the home to several discussion points, such as "Is twinning still relevant now?", "How do we appeal to new and especially younger members?", "Do we get sufficient support from our councils/local community?" "Public liability insurance",these are just a few items that have been raised and for which we would appreciate your views, but the forums/discussion boards are open for YOU to raise ANY twinning related subject you wish...........please feel free to raise your question or to express your views.
We have recently opened the "Calendar" feature within the forums which allows you to publicise your activites, whether it be a Twinning Visit or a Fund Raising or Social Function, this feature is open to all Forum Members to post but is readable by anyone, why not use it to attract new support or membership.
If we do not have the information you are looking for, please let us know and we will endeavour to help. You can contact us by post, telephone, email, or by a message in the forums.
Turkish Delight
As part of the accession process into the European Union communities in Turkey are looking for twins within the EU including the UK. We have received a request from Istanbul for UK communities who would like to link with various Turkish Towns, the Marmara Region alone has 300 communities looking for links with the object of working together with a view to improving their mutual knowledge, developing common projects, organising seminars on topics of common interest,and encouraging participation at grass roots level".
Turkey is a rapidly growing area for British holidaymakers but is not well represented among our current twinning links, this is a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor of an exciting new expansion for UK Twinners. There is currently a possibilty of funding for new projects but the deadline is 14th August 2007 for this particular round of funding, unfortunately we received the requst too late to publicise it earlier, however, this is a wonderful opportunity for any groups who wish to expand their twinninng portfolio.
Check out our discussion boards for further details.
Check out our forums for towns which are looking for a British link, we currently have requests from places as diverse as France, Spain, Turkey, Malawi and Swaziland.
The link to the appropriate section of the forums is here
Today, we have 171 groups listed,
Representing 309 seperate Twinning Groups,
who between them represent 425 Individual Twinning links around the world.
Latest News
Please help
A major problem facing nearly all Twinning Groups is the concern regarding child safety on youth exchanges. There are very strict rules in this country regarding the vetting of any person whose work involves contact with children who normally have to be CRB checked before they can continue in the position, this has also been expanded from the original concept to include volunteers, ie. leaders of youth groups, scouts, sports gorups to name but a couple.
There is a great deal of confusion and misconception regarding this matter and in order to clarify the issue, one of our member groups has spoken with their local Member of Parliament who has said he would be willing to speak in parliament under a 10 minute amendment rule, however, we need your thoughts and comments before we instruct him as to what exactly he needs to say.
Please check the forum here and then either add your comments within that thread or contact us directly at towntwinning@gmail.com
As there are very many exchange visits currently being planned for this summer we would like to get this clarified as soon as possible, therefore a prompt response would be welcomed. Thank you for your attention.
Sponsorship
There are several opportunities for you to sponsor this site. Sponsorship helps us to provide this service free of charge to twinning groups around the country, so please support our sponsors whenever you can. Thank you!