Seychelles pursues existing cooperation with La Reunion island
The French Ambassador to the Seychelles met with key stakeholders who are partners of the regional cooperation agreement between Seychelles and the La Reunion Island.
The meeting, chaired by Mr. Phillipe Delacroix, the French Ambassador accredited to Seychelles, was to activate the setting up of a steering committee whereby the partners of this cooperation in the fields of tourism , culture, sustainable and economic development, education , youth and sports , and health and social development could outline their priorities in terms of national and regional projects.
In addition, this steering committee will coordinate and oversee the smooth running of these projects.
The Seychelles Minister for Tourism and Culture, Alain St.Ange, personally attended this meeting with the Chief Executive of the Seychelles Tourism Board, Elsia Grandcourt, and his special advisor to the Ministry of Culture, Raymonde Onezime.
In terms of the tourism cooperation between Seychelles and La Reunion island, Minister St.Ange has detailed the Seychelles Tourism Board project to send one of its representatives to La Reunion and that La Reunion Tourism (IRT) was considering doing the same in a bid for each island to work on consolidating the islands existing cooperation.
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Minister St Ange has explained to Mr. Delacroix that “the presence of the Seychelles Tourism Board representative in the office of the La Reunion Tourism and that of a La Reunion representative in the office of the Seychelles Tourism Board will consolidate the growing partnership that exists between the two tourism offices to market the islands’ common tourism assets under the same umbrella.”
Seychelles, being part of the concept of the Vanilla Islands in the Indian Ocean, has grown close ties with IRT, the office of Tourism in La Reunion.
Minister St.Ange has also brought forward the project of the Seychelles Tourism Board to increase the number of its online promotional articles about the Seychelles in the French language. Minister St.Ange explained to the French Ambassador that the Seychelles Tourism Board’s news are disseminated through the online news medium in English on eTurboNews (eTN), and on different online tourism sites.
He explained that now that he had been negotiation with the eTN to have a French version of that popular and respected online news medium, ‘‘it is of utmost importance for the Seychelles and for La Reunion to help develop the French version of that news channel.”
The French ambassador to the Seychelles complimented these projects saying that they are important ‘‘in increasing the French promotional visibility of the Seychelles.”
In the cultural arena, Minister St.Ange spoke about the revamp of the Creole Festival in the Seychelles saying the ‘‘La Reunion island, which is also a proud Creole-speaking island, will continue to be invited to join with Seychelles in the event to promote the Creole language, the Creole culture, and the Creole people.”
Among many proposals relating to cultural cooperation between Seychelles and La Reunion island, there’s also a proposal to invite La Reunion artists to the Seychelles.