France/Roncq: twinning with Delbrück relaunched this weekend with a visit to Germany

On Saturday and Sunday, the municipality of Delbrück in North Rhine-Westphalia welcomed its counterpart from Roncq, as part of a first working trip organized by the Roncq-Delbrück association. After a ten-year break, the twinning project is back on track, and will initially involve exchanges between the two towns' secondary schools.

This is the story of an old couple reuniting after a ten-year break. Since 1991, the town of Roncq has been twinned with Delbrück in Germany, a community of 30,000 inhabitants located 450 km away in the North Rhine region. The cooperation was active until 2013, when the Roncq-Delbrück twinning association went on hiatus. It was then restarted after the covid, led by a new president from Roncq, Baptiste Decrock, and culminated this weekend in a first working visit between the two municipalities.

On Saturday and Sunday, the association took mayor Rodrigue Desmet, members of the municipal council and Philippe Montagne, principal of Roncq's Paul-Eluard secondary school, to meet their German counterparts, including Delbrück mayor Werner Peitz. The aim, explains Baptiste Decrock, was to " renew ties and see what can be done to revitalize the twinning ".

A new tool for exchanges: videoconferencing

The two towns have placed their bets on education and young people, by launching educational partnerships between the two secondary schools. The French delegation visited the Delbrück school complex, met the teachers and signed a charter with the partners from the other side of the Rhine. We're banking on exchanges between students, which will start with visios, something we didn't have ten years ago," explains President Decrock. Then there will be school trips, with German pupils coming to Roncq and French pupils to Delbrück. Over time, the pupils will get to know each other, want to see each other again, and develop new projects, also by joining the association. "

The mayors of the two towns reiterated "the importance of this cooperation and of forging links between the two peoples ". The Frenchmen returned home on Sunday evening with the impression of " a great contact ".

Source: www.lavoixdunord.fr/