Description
The villages AILLON-LE-JEUNE and SAUZON Belle-Ile-en-Mer in Brittany overcame the tragedy of an ecological catastrophe to transform it into an impressive story of friendship and solidarity.
After the sadly notorious sinking of the Erika, a delegation of 115 Savoyard volunteers had gone to help the inhabitants of Belle-Ile to clean up the oil on the shores. A great bond was forged between the seaside and mountain communities during the battle to clean-up the oil. This is when André Guerraz, mayor of Aillon-le-Jeune first met Rohan Juhel, mayor of Sauzon, who had been interested for a long time by a partnership rapprochement with a mountain commune. The two men hit it off from the start.
"We’ll always remember the arrival of your mountain people in February 2000 bringing their climbing expertise to clean up the sides of the cliffs that we couldn’t reach. So when the volunteers went back, all of us in the Palais harbour said it couldn’t end there."
In June 2001, the twinning covenant charter sealing the alliance between the two communities was signed at the Préfecture of the Savoie to symbolise the support of the Savoie at the oil disaster.
The handing over of the charters was a two stage process: in June 2001 at Aillon-le-Jeune and in October 2001 at Sauzon. And since emergence of this committee, people from Sauzon and Les Aillons have kept in touch and these links have continued to strengthen. Both communities, young and old alike, through their visits to each other, now share their culture and gastronomy, discovering numerous similarities in spite of the distance separating them.
Keeping our Twinning committee alive is to work on this perspective of bringing populations together and reinforce the bonds of friendship that have been woven between the Savoyards and Bretons.
