thanks you for your enthusiastic reception of its 14 high school students and two chaperones who arrived in Scituate on July 10 for a two week Séjour Linguistique The success of this program was made possible by the generous contributions of numerous residents from vastly different backgrounds: teachers and host families that included parents with high schoolers studying French grandmothers with grandchildren of varying ages as well as couples with no children at home You all showed our guests that Scituate is a welcoming friendly town whether you speak French or not The Sucy students were in Scituate primarily to improve their English skills This was facilitated by a two-week language class taught by Scituate teacher par excellence and enhanced by English interaction with host families and guides during cultural excursions students were instructed by Matt Lucitt and Bridget Desjourdy The Séjour Linguistique takes place every two years in Scituate most host families are already making plans to visit Sucy in the near future This year students were greeted by French flags in the harbor and the Scituate/Sucy-en-Brie flag proudly displayed at Town Hall and then relaxed by the pool at their teacher’s house Subsequent afternoons included Plimoth Plantation a rowing class at the Cohasset Maritime Institute the JFK Library and Ted Kennedy Senate Replica The committee would like to recognize Tracy Duffey and Brian Lannon for their helpful participation in many of our activities The Séjour Linguistique again this year proved to be an enjoyable international experience for all participants as well as for many other Scituate residents The Scituate/Sucy-en-Brie Sister City Committee heartily thanks all who helped our guests enjoy a truly memorable English immersion experience  The Scituate/Sucy-en-Brie Sister City Committee Patricia Jacquart has been passionate about French culture since she was in high school and she loves sharing that culture with others As a French and Latin teacher at Scituate High School she is the chairperson of the Scituate/Sucy-en-Brie Sister City Committee and continues to work connecting the two cultures More: Bridging two cities with one pastime More: An aristocratic visitor comes to town “I never dreamed I would one day play a role in forming a sister city relationship with a town in France,” she said.  “It has been a wonderful experience to see my students’ world view expand through the French exchanges to see them experience firsthand the French way of life and realize that there are many similarities between Americans and the French that we can discover and share with each other.” the Sister City Committee will celebrate its 10th anniversary of the friendship pact with Sucy-en-Brie A coming together of culturesScituate and Cohasset High Schools have a long history sponsoring student exchange programs with high schools in France “I became Foreign Language Department chair and teacher of French and Latin in 1994 We continued the ongoing exchange with the Lycée Condorcet in Saint Maur France until the participating teachers there retired Soon after we initiated an exchange with an English teacher friend of mine at the Lycée Jeanne d’Arc in Rouen we began our exchange with the Lycée Christophe Colomb in Sucy-en-Brie.” The first exchange together was such a success that it was immediately agreed to repeat it during the 2008-2009 school year “Our schools worked so well together that we knew that this had become a biennial event that tremendously enriched both towns,” Jacquart said.  “It was at this time that the town of Sucy-en-Brie asked us if we would like to be their Sister City subsequent to the approval of our town Select Board.” especially with the enthusiasm of then-members Joe Norton and John Danehey “We signed our pact in Scituate in 2010 and in Sucy in 2011 And our relationship has grown stronger with each year.” Jacquart feels it is important to Scituate to have this connection to Sucy-en-Brie but can seem insulated from the international community,” she said.  “I firmly believe that everyone benefits from exposure to the outside world under the right circumstances Travel certainly expands our horizon beyond what we see from Scituate’s sandy shores and can affect our perspective on the world and even impact our lives.” Student exchanges offer a deeper understanding and appreciation of a different way of life compared to trips to another country through a tour company The exchange experience was often “life-changing” for the students gaining them friends and a more “open-minded perspective” of the world “From sponsoring student exchanges in France to becoming a sister city of Sucy-en-Brie Scituate has provided opportunities for all its residents to play a larger role in the international community,” Jacquart said.  “We are more broad-minded people because of these choices.” A group of adults from Sucy-en-Brie who hosted adults from Scituate in 2019 will be visiting Scituate from April 25 to May 4 “We have remained in close touch with them since our visit there but COVID prevented them from visiting us until now,” Jacquart said.  “We are very excited to introduce them to our life here in Scituate and in New England.” three officials from Sucy-en-Brie will accompany the group in order to participate in the 10th anniversary of the Sister Cities We encourage all of our residents to embrace our French family in any way they can “Your lives will be so much richer because of your willingness to open your eyes and hearts to this international experience You will have a chance to share your way of life with someone who is different from you This experience always breaks down stereotypes and creates new friendships because of it.” The public is encouraged to attend the 10th anniversary celebration of the Sister City connection with Sucy-en-Brie taking place at 10 a.m April 30 at the Scituate Center for the Performing Arts 606 Chief Justice Cushing Highway (Route 3A) Learn how much this friendship with Sucy-en-Brie has benefitted the Town of Scituate and what you can enjoy personally in the future French and American pastries will be served at the end of the program For more information visit facebook.com/ScituateSucy Follow Ruth Thompson on Twitter @scituateruth By entering your email address and clicking “Submit,” you agree to receive updates from the Open Society Foundations about our work. To learn more about how we use and protect your personal data, please view our privacy policy Citizens of Romania are today free to establish legal residence anywhere in the European Union and petty crime are more lucrative in France than in Romania Even the limited social services available to migrants in France are more generous than the services available to Roma in Romania The French language is easily mastered by speakers of Romanian Living conditions for most Roma in Romania’s ghettos are worse than those in the illegal Roma squatter camps of France And France’s prisons are vacation spas compared with Romania’s “We left Romania because we were starving,” said Doina who was residing in an illegal squatter camp outside Paris in May 2012 official French efforts to deal with Roma migrants and their squatter camps had one underlying theme: to create conditions difficult enough to drive away the migrants already in the country and to deter new migrants from coming The dirty work largely fell to local officials generally people who do not want illegal migrants irritating their constituents Many local officials court votes by overstating the magnitude and gravity of the migrant issue tapping into the prejudice some French people have against Roma Local officials have resorted to the courts and the national police to issue and execute eviction orders which effectively pass the migrants on to other jurisdictions whose officials inevitably pass them on yet again France’s national government gave 300 euros per adult and a free airline ticket for each Roma migrant volunteering to leave France and return to Romania But this measure provided a Roma family of five with a profit that exceeded the annual income of many Roma families living in ghettos in Romania Many migrants who accepted the handouts simply returned to France Romania’s government has little incentive to halt Roma emigration French society is split over how it regards Roma migrants a small army of French lawyers and activists many of them Roman Catholic and Evangelical Christians volunteer their time to assist Roma migrants There are also people who support the migrant Roma because they entertain romantic fantasies about “Gypsies.” racist hatred of Roma and consider them nothing more than “Gypsy thieves.” I’ll take him by the ears and throw him onto the street,” said the Basque owner of a restaurant near the Gare du Nord ‘I’ll be out in ten minutes.’ Right wingers have circulated leaflets whipping up hysteria about a “Gypsy invasion.” Clashes have erupted in and around Roma camps racist discourse and violence solve nothing people looking for better lives,” said Henri Braun a lawyer who has for years represented Roma migrants pro bono “Many Roma who arrived in France with nothing thirty years ago are now living in apartments and doing fine Their children have gone to school and now have careers So the problem is not inherently with the Roma the same racism that existed in France a century ago Solving this problem requires guaranteeing equal rights and eliminating racist speech some of which is already illegal in France.” Roma migrants from Romania are not allowed to hold many jobs in France Many Roma migrants express scant interest in settling in France as tax- and rent-paying holders of French resident cards or passports Many say their goal is to save money in order to build a house in Romania and this requires keeping their cost of living in France to an absolute minimum Young people sell newspapers on the street or squeegee windshields Some people labor on farms or for landscaping and construction companies—jobs that allow for significant savings only if taxes can be evaded Some collect and sell discarded plastic and metal to scrap dealers though it angers the locals when the Roma steal or when they leave a mess after rifling through neighborhood trash bins Some Roma migrants comb forests on private land to gather cépe mushrooms to sell to fine restaurants; others pinch flowers and vegetables from private gardens and sell them in green markets or on the street Some Roma—especially younger people—take to the Gare du Nord and other tourist hubs to beg and to prey upon travelers soliciting donations for “deaf-mutes” and other people in need and fleecing the naïve with rings of “gold.” the son of an immigrant to France from Hungary launched the first in a series of publicity-grabbing crackdowns on migrants that would punctuate his tenures as France’s security minister and hundreds of police in riot gear descended upon two squatter camps the police have carried out dozens of raids and expulsion operations on Roma camps Some police officers have allegedly confiscated or stolen money carried by migrant Roma caught begging The law of France was amended to allow the government to deport citizens of other European Union countries who remain on the territory of France for longer than three months unless they have become officially employed or enrolled in school President Sarkozy saw fit to call an unprecedented well-publicized meeting of the government dedicated in part to the Roma and crime Sarkozy himself specifically referred to illegal Roma-inhabited camps as sources of crime and called upon the ministries to dismantle them within three months highly publicized expulsions had already begun a government order instructed local authorities to dismantle “illegal camps,” explicitly prioritizing those inhabited by Roma The government endured a flood of criticism and revised the order by removing the specific reference to Roma According to the government and nongovernmental organizations from January to October 2011 more than 13,000 citizens of Romania and Bulgaria were expelled from more than 100 camp sites Sarkozy backed down after the European Commission announced an intention to initiate legal proceedings against France for infringement of the European Union’s charter A Council of Europe report later found that France’s deportation of thousands of Roma from Romania and Bulgaria in 2010 was based upon discriminatory laws specifically targeting Roma individuals and their families that “voluntary” returns were actually forced expulsions and that the destruction of hundreds of illegal Roma camps was discriminatory and violated human rights The police went on to raze still more squatter camps in 2011 and repatriated another 33,000 migrants he migrated with his family to France from Buzescu a town in south central Romania famous for wealthy Roma involved in organized crime began helping his family make ends meet by “working” at the Gare du Nord and lesser rail stations begged beside his mother during the early years He later played a flute and sang for coins there is money to be made by dressing up in a shirt and sport coat and helping foreign travelers work the ticket was expecting the national police to evict him and the rest of his family from the vacant lot they had been occupying in Sucy-en-Brie All of the 200 or so migrants from Romania squatting there were expecting the police to haul them off for deportation “I was expelled in April and another time two months before that,” said one of D.D.’s neighbors “I spent nights on the street with five kids in January and February and the other migrants had arranged their campers and shacks in neat rows Generations of women and girls were keeping the interiors impeccably clean Most able-bodied men and women went off to make money early each morning leaving the kids to the young girls and grandparents The camp existed in violation of a battery of laws The migrants had surrounded their shacks and campers with an unsightly chaos of scavenged scrap metal They fired up portable generators to light their homes and run power tools They burned almost anything to heat their shacks and campers They cranked open fire hydrants to draw water for drinking Sucy-en-Brie’s local authorities provided the migrants with a single dumpster; once it had filled the people discarded their refuse among the saplings and tall grass along the camp’s fringe Migrants generally turn to public health clinics and hospital emergency rooms to obtain medical care because school officials refuse to admit them many of the migrant kids meander freely through Paris—jumping turnstiles and loose change from the tables of outdoor cafés Police officers in Sucy-en-Brie said the migrant Roma there posed no significant crime threat a few cellphones and some cash snatched from café tables … that’s all.” “They’d come into town on market days,” said one Arab barista “Sometimes they’d order a coffee and run off without paying and sometimes they’d throw litter on the ground people complained that the Roma were parking along the river and were burning campfires.” another lawyer who represents migrant Roma pro bono resides in Sucy-en-Brie and is a Socialist Party member of its council “The migrant issue divides the townspeople,” he said After about 30 Roma migrants occupied an abandoned factory building in 2008 including a school principal and a drugstore owner organized a solidarity movement to assist the migrants in a way that would keep their families together and develop a lasting solution to their needs including enrollment of their children in school The movement circulated a petition to raise awareness in the town hall D.D.’s group of about 200 showed up in the vacant lot practically overnight in late 2011 Some local residents distributed fliers warning that the city would be flooded by a wave of thieving “Romanians.” In April 2012 and his neighbors received official eviction notices and orders to leave France A regulation supposedly bars France’s national police from arriving before six a.m and the other migrants in the vacant lot in Sucy-en-Brie figured the police would show up hours before dawn Haste is the rule when clearing out: Gather the birth certificates and the bedding into the car or van or house trailer Abandon anything you can scavenge elsewhere defeated the incumbent Sarkozy to become president of France voters gave the Socialists a majority of seats in the country’s National Assembly Hollande pledged to end routine evictions and deportations of illegal migrants and to seek solutions for dealing with their problems without attracting a tidal wave of new migrants seeking better lives and the migrants to remove themselves from the vacant lot by September 15 men and women from the Sucy-en-Brie site began seeking a new place to settle everyone had moved to a new camp in another Paris suburb This article is part of a series examining Roma political participation in France and partners about how we’re working around the world to build vibrant and inclusive democracies whose governments are accountable and open to the participation of all people Every year the Open Society Foundations give thousands of grants to groups and individuals that work on issues we focus on—promoting justice Women from the Roma community push a shopping trolley containing water toward their camp in Sucy-en-Brie A vigilante attack against a Roma teenager has shocked France and put pressure on the French government to improve conditions for the ethnic minority Human rights advocates say the rise of a xenophobic climate in the country may have contributed to the attack French news reports say 16-year-old Darius, whose last name has not been released, was found bloodied and unconscious in a grocery cart by the side of the road in a suburb north of Paris He was kidnapped and beaten by a dozen or so youths who accused him of stealing President Francois Hollande condemned what he called an unspeakable and unjustifiable act a spokesperson for human rights group SOS Racism says the incident is not so surprising considering the atmosphere in France today the 16-year-old Roma boy who was the victim of a brutal vigilante attack won an election in this country and won a lot of gains all over Europe," she says "And [the attack] is the result of this context." The elections she's referring to are recent European parliamentary elections, where the far right came out on top in France French governments on both the right and left have been criticized for their harsh dealings and deportation of Roma The Roma, sometimes referred to as gypsies, migrated to Europe from India during the Middle Ages They have always faced harsh discrimination across the continent They began coming in large numbers to Western Europe when Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007 Roma are part of the landscape in Paris today there are always gangs of young Roma girls hitting the tourists up for money — who won't give her full name because she is frightened of the police — is one of those girls They carry clipboards with petition-like papers on them I begin to ask the girls what their lives are like our conversation attracts a couple of police officers But Roma are often accused of stealing from tourists and Parisians across the city Laurent Thebault runs a souvenir stand near the Eiffel Tower I'm confronted by these girls all summer long They're often pregnant; they ask for water and steal from me," he says I see these people are not able to integrate and this is the only way they can survive." Thebault says people are increasingly nervous because European governments seem to have no coherent plan for the Roma in Europe Become an NPR sponsor Premium Beauty News - Thirty years of age already Aude de Livonnière - It’s true that time just flies This gives me the opportunity of looking back on these past 30 years.. Xavier de Livonnière and his partner Jean Ceresa who were running a big printing company specialized in rotogravure able to meet the needs of SMBs; this resulted in the creation of the "LivCer" Company whose name was coined with the first three letters of the founders’ family names But the two partners remained completely involved in the development of Les Charmettes, (until its sale to large international groups). Hence, Xavier de Livonnière entrusted, from its inception, the management of Livcer to his children To meet the needs for agility of its customers Charles decided to chose and take up the daring challenge of flexographic printing it offers many advantages: a high-quality printing offer along with a drastic reduction in costs and deadlines The pharmaceutical industry was immediately seduced by the process Charles made the avant-garde choice to use water-based inks and to settle his activity in an eco-responsible environment This pioneering spirit helped establish Livcer Flexographie as the benchmark Company in continuous printing But at the same time, Livcer had also responded to a very specific request for the packaging of thermoformed doses This could have been the end of the development of the Company but I quickly understood the huge potential this technology offered for the cosmetic industry and I decided to join the family business and created Livcer Monodose in 1991 Beauty brands were won over by this new sampling format that satisfied all their requirements: insure the preservation of formulas rely on a very flexible material that allows creating every possible shape and finally thanks to the insert on which the single dose is presented the market for cosmetic single-doses exploded and we became the experts in this type of packaging Premium Beauty News - And today success is the same Aude de Livonnière - Yes, absolutely! Today, Livcer employs around fifty people manufactures some 90 million thermoformed doses each year and has a turnover of 15 million euros A double-digit increase again this year is pushing us to increase our production capacity the plant located right next to ours in Sucy-en-Brie was for sale We will be operational next spring 2019 and this will allow us to purely and simply increase our capacity twofold Premium Beauty News - That means more machines we intend to acquire additional production lines We currently rely on eight thermoforming lines that can condition either horizontally or vertically Our biggest market remains cosmetics (80%) A market equally divided between personal care and make-up knowing that the latter is currently enjoying the fastest growth And concerning the products we manufacture the share of "samples" represents 75% of our business we will certainly start running new "home-made" thermoforming lines with a brand-design Premium Beauty News - Innovation is your DNA Aude de Livonnière - That’s what makes the Company stand apart and allows us to be the European leader in thermoformed doses We have managed the technological feat of encapsulating in an ultra slim large size blister a foundation or a skincare beautistas can check if the colour of the texture appeals to them this new sample respects eco-designing standards The Cosmetic Press epitomises 30 years of continuous innovation Let me recall the milestones of these past five years.. to print your kisses: a never-seen-before technology of reverse printing to read on your lips: a sample lipstick and a concentrated pack of excellence to double the dose: the double casting technology implemented makes it possible to propose two colours in the same single dose sample the mini-cushion for the dosing of touch-ups loose powder samples fitted with micro-perforated lids that perfectly mimic the sifters of traditional powder cases This enables the brand to promote its product since the consumer uses the same application gesture as he would with a powder case the sample can be fitted with its powder puff we can supply the applicators and even condition the cushions the foundation is poured on a cushion and it can be used for one or two applications Premium Beauty News - And what about your export sales Aude de Livonnière - We are progressing each year a little more.. Exports sales represent today 20% of our activity Main countries targeted: the United States and Italy (given the number of make-up contract manufactures in the country) Cosmoprof Worldwide Bologna concluded on a high note The show has closed its 56th edition with a 4.5% increase in.. foundation has constantly been reinvented to meet consumer demands which will be held in Amsterdam from April 08 to 10 "It's very hard to move from place to place a Roma woman living in a warehouse in Sucy-en-Brie) An informal settlement in Seine-Saint Denis where some families are camped after eviction from Villeneuve-Le Roi September 11 2007: "Parking prohibited for nomads and peddlers." © Monique Heddebaut Made possible  through  the support of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Sabrina Plancher and Michael O’Neil II were married June 29 at Eglise Saint-Martin in Sabrina’s hometown of Sucy en Brie The bride is the daughter of Daniel Plancher of Sucy en Brie The groom is the son of Michael and Karen O’Neil of Norwich a reception was held at the Chateau de Santeny in Santeny The couple honeymooned in Italy and Corsica Coast Guard Academy Officers’ Club in New London for guests who were unable to attend the wedding in France Sabrina earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from the University of Paris XII She also earned a master’s degree in teaching English to speakers of other languages from West Virginia University She teaches first grade French Immersion in Milton Coast Guard Academy with a bachelor’s degree in international affairs He is assigned to the Coast Guard Research and Development Center in Groton