Département du Calvados

description of organisation

The “Département du Calvados” is a local authority (the Counties are the 3rd level of administration in France, after the State and the Regions) with approximately 3000 employees.
Its main compulsory areas of responsibility are: health and social services, county roads, secondary schools, rural capital works, environmental development and sustainability, culture (departmental lending library and archives) and fire safety.
The Department is also committed to a proactive policy in the fields of sport, education, tourism, access to culture, twinning and European exchanges...

The Département du Calvados is twinned with 3 European regions: Devon (Great Britain - 1971), Lower Franconia (Germany - 1986) and the Province of Treviso (Italy - 2007).
In order to implement the different actions of opening up the citizens of Calvados to Europe and the world, the elected representatives of the Département decided in 1991, to create the "service des jumelages" (twinning office), which has become the “service Actions éducatives, Citoyenneté, Europe” (department for Educational Actions, Citizenship, Europe).
It animates a network of 165 twinning committees and 203 twinned municipalities by proposing information meetings, cultural events, thematic workshops, training sessions, newsletters… and also provides financial support to municipalities and twinning committees and help them to carry out their projects (school, youth and citizen exchanges, Europe related educational projects, hosting volunteers, language courses...).

It also carries out different actions in the cultural field for secondary schools pupils (formal education), in partnership with the National Education :
- “Speak 14” programme (language assistants from different countries raise the awareness of cultural differences),
- financial support for school exchanges with foreign countries,
- support for setting up and running Europe clubs (Europe related workshops in secondary schools),
- Europe Day with a different theme every year ,
- “gaze into the mind of 15 year olds” and “Inter’Act Tour” programmes (part of the Bayeux Calvados war correspondents' award to raise young people's awareness of current political events),
- support for the "Mobiklasse" activities (promotion of the German language and culture).

The Department of Calvados and its Lower Franconia (Germany) 35 years partner developed and initiated different activities and projects in favour of a better mutual understanding and the spreading of the European idea:
• Sending and hosting volunteers (for 24 years)
• Seminars for elected representatives and technicians in various fields
• Meetings of representatives of youth organisations to encourage multinational youth exchanges
• Youth exchanges
• Exchanges of cultural actors
• Training courses for young amateur musicians in the partner region
• Support for municipalities, associations, youth centres, schools,… which search for a partner.

Target groups are the citizens of Calvados, especially:
• Young people from 6 to 30 years old
• Associations (twinning committees, youth clubs)
• Youth organisations
• representatives of municipalities / group of municipalities
• Teachers and representatives of the National Education