Second answer (!)

3 days after, as I was still on vacations, came this second letter from Megan:

Hi Jean, I hope you received my message; I think our emails ‘crossed’ at some point! I’ve mentioned your interest to Amsterdam Cares and they’re happy to speak with you. The board president, Wouter Metz, is in Paris weekly and could meet with you there, or they also invite you to come over to Amsterdam to learn more about their operations onsite. I’d love to speak with you by phone next week to offer some responses to your questions below. I also invite you to peruse some of our online resources… some suggestions are below. I look forward to speaking with you soon; feel free to let me know a couple of times at your convenience and I’ll be happy to call you.

Online resources:

Due to the post-merger integration still taking place, our online resources are in a few different places at the moment, some carrying outdated branding but still good content! We are planning to launch a new online ‘affiliate member center’ with these items in a central location in the spring. In the meantime, these two links have a good amount of our latest program resources:

Online learning modules and other resources (create a free account for the online modules):
http://www.nationalserviceresources.org/volunteer-member-staff-management/leveraging-volunteers.

Effective Practice Briefs from HON: http://www.nationalserviceresources.org/ep-hon

Be HandsOn Campus resources (on engaging university students in service): http://www.behandson.org/campus

Check out our blog: http://handsonaction.blogspot.com/

Warm regards,

Megan

There are even videos to learn how to succesfully build a caring project up!
Very useful, and motivating :)

I've got to come back to this article for some feedback on the diverse resources. I have to look at all this first!

Answer! (1 of 2, enthusiastic answers!)

On February 3rd, I finally received this e-mail:

Hi Jean,

Thank you so much for connecting with HandsOn Network, and for your interest in starting a HandsOn organization in Paris... very exciting! We have a collective of 10 organizations in our international affiliate membership who I am sure would be happy to see a new partner emerge in Paris!

Gary, thank you as always for driving new interest in HandsOn our way. I mentioned to Ellen the other day that I think it’s a draw between NYCares and BostonCares for who brings in more interest in partnership with HandsOn from outside the US- thank you for being such an awesome ambassador!

Jean, we are in process of redefining membership requirements for organizations outside the United States; I anticipate this will be final in the next month and will alert you to the latest information. Until this is complete, we are not accepting applications from new affiliates. However, I'd like to stay in touch with you and offer the new application when it's finalized.

In conjunction with this, and to equip new organizations starting HandsOn programming, we are also revising startup manuals and training materials. We have pretty aggressive expansion goals this year, funded by and mapped to a corporate partner's locations, and while Paris is not included in the list of target locations, the resources being funded to drive the expansion will be useful to you. They primarily will come in the form of a new 'startup' training program to be offered at our annual conference in San Francisco June 22-24. The “international startup” training date is tentatively set for June 21, and you are invited to join us. I will send you full details including costs as soon as they are available (within the month) for your consideration. In the meantime, find out more about our conference and complete registration for the general audience portion at VolunteeringAndService.org.

In the interim, you may wish to connect with Viviane de Bruijne, the executive director of Amsterdam Cares, who can share the experience of Amsterdam Cares with you; they're actually planning expansion to become Netherlands Cares and grow to new cities due to the growing demand for their programming! Viviane’s email: viviane@amsterdamcares.nl

I would also be happy to connect with you by phone to learn more about where you are right now in terms of starting up. Feel free to let me know a good time (or two) to reach you in the next week, and / or call me at your convenience at the number below. I look forward to hearing from you. Many thanks again for connecting with us!

Warm regards,

Megan

This e-mail is quite big! And full of information.

It first gives great hopes, because it seems this HandsOn network is well alive, and even growing, faster and faster, full of people willing to help!

Some fears too, at first reading: this network seems really big, everything is going fast, they have aggressive politics and high priority targets... All this seemed to me quite far from the volunteering jobs!

And already talking of costs while I haven't even started anything, and wonder where I'm going to get funds for that, and even if I get make myself a living out of this...

--

I think I needed this "prise de conscience". I think I knew it, and it just confirms it: Not everything is going to be easy, and it will require some time and money :)

Now I think we are often afraid of what we don't know. Remembering the quotations, I think that small step after small step, this can be made! Lots of resources exists, we just have to get into them! And it's reassuring it seems to work so well elsewhere. It may take time, but I'm sure one day, France will get its volunteering network. In the meantime, maybe I can travel a bit to get some ideas!

I have to get information, listen to experiences and success stories, to take some time to make myself more familiar with all this, in order to understand how it works. Everything's gonna be all right :)

No answer and a lot of questions raising

Some days passed, without any news...
I wrote a new e-mail, more personal, to Megan and Helen only.
(this was just before I leave to Martinique for some days of vacation)

Dear Ellen Ferben,
Dear Megan Latimer,

I hope you have received my previous e-mails...

Gary Bagley, the executive director of New York cares has given me your e-mail addresses, because he thought you could inform me better on the way new cities can become affiliated with the Hands on network, especially in Europe.

The concept seems brilliant to me, and I really hope that one day, people, in France, could find such organizations in their cities, that would organize, centralize and grow volunteering projects of all kinds, and a website that would allow them to decide as late as Friday evening that they want to be helpful for 3 hours on Sunday morning, in a place they've never been to, meeting people they would never have met without this decision, and make it happen in one click of a mouse.

I have no idea of how the other projects started, but I would just love it to happen in my country, and work.

That is why I come to you, because this network exists, and because it seems to me the best way to make it happen.

I have a few questions, whose answers would already help me a lot, to move forward:

- Where does the decision usually come from? Do you usually propose the idea to some cities, or do they come to you? Is or have there been some project already, to affiliate Paris or another French city?
- Who do you work with at the beginning? Should an organization be formed, previously to any work?
- What are the prerequisites to start a project?
- How does the concept work in Europe, for instance in Amsterdam? How do you see it possible in France?
- Do you think Paris and its suburb is a good place to start with, or would you advise to start with a smaller city?
- How long does it usually take between the time the decision to start is taken, and the time the first project gathers its first volunteers?

In a nutshell, what would be, for you, the best way to make it happen?

Thank you for your answers, advices and help,

Sincerely,

Jean

Second step

I answered to Gary, Megan, and Ellen.
This second step was a bit easier, still quite meaningful, like a confirmation.
I really didn't know what to expect from the HandsOn network people.
I thanked them in advance for their help.
I was looking forward to an answer.

4 quotations

This one is from Olja, it is at the end of every of her e-mails:

"Just to be on the first step should make you happy and proud. To have reached this point is no small achievement:what you've done already is a wonderful thing. Even this first step is a long way above the ordinary world."

Constantine P. Cavafy

This told me how important this first step was. It's not nothing. Now I shouldn't stop.

Second one, quite reassuring, and motivating:

“Take the first step, and your mind will mobilize all its forces to your aid. But the first essential is that you begin. Once the battle is startled, all that is within and without you will come to your assistance.” Robert Collier

Third one is from St Exupéry, the man who wrote the Little Prince:

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

And last one, part of the common French wisdom.

"Petit à petit, l'oiseau fait son nid"

Old sayings have traveled the time. They are simple but shouldn't be neglected!

If the bird can do it, I can do it, we can do it... Just do it! :)

An answer from Gary Bagley (!)

Some days after, wow, I received an answer:

Dear Jean,

I am so glad that you have enjoyed your volunteer work with New York Cares so much that you are interested in starting something similar in Paris! I am copying two people from our national organization, Ellen Ferber and Megan Latimer, so they can guide you ways to start in affiliate in Europe.

Please let me know how your work progresses. I am so pleased that you are inspired to do this!

Regards,

Gary

I was very happy.

The first step: a letter to Gary Bagley.

After some reflection, and few talks with friends, some failed attempts to numbers or e-mail dedicated for global information, and boosted by the Obamania raging in the US, I decided, on that Martin Luther King day, to write directly to Gary Bagley, head of the New York Cares organization:

Dear Gary Bagley,

I am from France and I am 24. In March last year, I decided to come to New York City, to work and live here for one year.
Freshly graduated from a French engineering school ("grande école"), I have been working here as a software engineer for a French bank (Société Générale).

One of my great joys here, and a formidable way to get to know local people and
neighborhoods while being useful, was your New York Cares organization,
and its website.

I will have to be back in France soon, and would love to find such an
organization there, maybe in Paris and its suburb first, and, why not, to participate in
its creation. French culture is different, but I'm pretty sure this can work there as well.

I have seen that, thanks to the Hands on Network, Amsterdam got its organization,
as well as some other cities outside the US, and I wonder if there is already a project to create a new "Paris cares" website.

Are you aware of any project that would have started there?
Did some people already contact you with the same idea?

If not, what would be, for you, according to your experience, the steps to
make it happen?

Those days, I have been trying to call the Hands on Network in Atlanta, or to write them an e-mail, but the phone doesn't answer, and I get an error back when I try their e-mail address.

That's why I count on some help from you to get some information,
either some advices or the contact information of some other people,
that would allow me to move forward in that project.

Thank you very much,

Sincerely,

Jean Reimbold

Starting up: the blog, the project

Et voilà!

Un nouveau blog qui commence. A new blog is starting.
Hard to know which language to speak here...

I will just start with English, as the inspiration for this project first came in English.

This won't be a blog telling about my life, or not exclusively (I hope being able to have a life aside of this project, though I think right now it can be a quite involving one. It already keeps my mind very busy :)

I will use this blog first for me, as a tool to keep track of thoughts, inspirations, ideas and steps... everything related to this project, to help it moving forward. Knowing myself a bit, I also know I need to share this, and that it will help me not to give up. The main reward for this project should be the smiles I can see, or imagine on people's faces, when seeing this project growing.

And as we often gain a lot when working and thinking together, I'm sure this blog can help gathering some constuctive ideas!

I will open this blog only to a very few people first. All the people in here will be good friendly people, so feel at home, and don't be shy!

-Jean