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