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