Following on from previous posts this is an update as to what is happening here at La Giraudiere. How we still hope to recover some of our 2020 season from the coronavirus epidemic.

As France slowly starts to come out of it’s confinement I am now able to travel up to 100 kilometres from La Giraudiere. I now no longer need to make and print an attestation for when going out shopping or othe vital reasons.

Some schools start to reopen, shops also start to reopen but still no news concerning restaurants, bars and cafes. There is talk of tourist events starting to happen and sporting events may restart but with no public audience.

The French prime minister said “French restaurants and cafes may be allowed to reopen from June 2, and pupils can start returning to school from May 11. This would be with strict rules. Public events of more than 5,000 people are outlawed until September. Working from home is encouraged for at least three more weeks”.

He further said “The tourism industry is likely to continue to suffer, as beaches will not reopen until at least June 1. Parks and gardens will be accessible only where virus infections are low, and inter-regional travel will be discouraged”.

Corona-virus vaccine needed

To date at La Giraudiere the April, May and June programs were cancelled and it may be inevitable that July, August, September and October may also be cancelled. Fingers crossed a vaccine is needed soon.

As a non-profit association resources at La Giraudiere are low and we have never created a fund, or treasury, to cover such an emergency. Anything gained was always put back into the project, with insight we should have created a reserve for such happenings.

So this year will be particularly difficult, as for many others, with no revenue from Erasmus projects, volunteers and interns fees. Many of you who had reserved a place for this year and paid your deposit have asked for it to be carried over to 2021 and some of you have donated that deposit towards helping the project get through these difficult times, for these gestures of solidarity I thank you all.

Crowdfunding may help La Giraudiere

To further help finance this year and recover from the financial losses I have started to put in place different crowdfunding platforms the first of which is at GoFundMe which you can see at
http://www.gofundme.com/f/help-save-our-project-in-france

If you would like to help and can afford a small donation then please do so and thank you but, if times are difficult for you to, then you can still help simply by posting a link on your Facebook page to our blog or to one of our crowdfunds. If you have twitter then please tweet this blog post on you twitter account every little bit helps.

“Thankyou to all and keep safe”