21–30 of 32 posts
For the American audience: Emmaus is the Goodwill for France.
Sort of related is one of my favorite things in NL: the “mini bibliotheek”, the free for all bookcases to share books (often placed in front of a house by the residents).
Here’s an example one: https://velsencityblog.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/groot.j...
France is a very socialized country, but with the specificity of having transferred a lot of initiatives to associative actors. I think that what Emmaus is doing is very good, but sometimes I wonder if the French way of doing things has not frozen everything in a bit of mediocrity. A majority of the people supported by Emmaus would be better off in a country that doesn't destroy its industries and its professional education.
For the American audience: Emmaus is the Goodwill for France.
Similarly in the Netherlands we have Kringloopwinkels. Sort of related is one of my favorite things in NL: the “mini bibliotheek”, the free for all bookcases to share books (often placed in front of a house by the residents). Here’s an example one: https://velsencityblog.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/groot.j...
You unload what you can't move (or don't need) before you go, then you buy what you left (or now need) once you arrive.
It's like renting furnitures :)
Funny thing is that the quality of stuff depends heavily on the location. For example Emmaus close to a rich holiday littoral city I know is very often be full of super nice furniture, including golf gear because it's basically rich people getting rid of old stuff because they want something new at home. On the other hand Emmaus in the north of paris (poor) is really full of super old damaged furniture and ugly cloth…
The Emmaus center for Versailles and other cosy cities around is located in Trappes. Trappes is one of the most "difficult" cities in France.
I give to Emmaus quite often and see very diverse population and donated objects. So what you get there is really random, and usually falls into the category of "great" or "mediocre", with not too much in between.
They are also doing a lot of reintegration work which is very often copied by other associations or the private sector if it seems profitable. As part of their computer refurbishment activity, they have been promoting their own Debian-based distribution for years. https://emmabuntus.org/ France is a very socialized country, but with the specificity of having transferred a lot of initiatives to associative actors. I t…
Off topic, but I'm curious about the two dots over the letter u, which is something I've never seen before in French. Living in a German-speaking land, I'm used to seeing the same name written as Emmäus, where the umlaut serves not only to shift the sound of the a vowel but also to imply the emphasis goes there... Now I understand the normal French u-sound is naturally closer to the German ü than any English vowel wi…
Off topic, but I'm curious about the two dots over the letter u, which is something I've never seen before in French. Living in a German-speaking land, I'm used to seeing the same name written as Emmäus, where the umlaut serves not only to shift the sound of the a vowel but also to imply the emphasis goes there... Now I understand the normal French u-sound is naturally closer to the German ü than any English vowel wi…
Without the trema, this word would be pronounced something like "/emo/". With it, it's pronounced "/ema.yz/".
If you see two dots in French, Spanish, Portuguese (and English as written by The New Yorker!) you're looking at a trema.
