The Know-it-all Passport book, which comes out every two years, provides a substantial collection of addresses and information about where to find things in the Lake Geneva region. It’s now part of a larger offer, with the web site providing information and calendars for activities, events, and local businesses, with companies invited to submit their own information.
The book began life as a guide for mothers in the area, written by Lisa Cirieco, who grew up in Geneva in an American family. It has been expanded over the years and a special strength, also reflected on the web site, is some of the smaller community groups and activities that are hard to find elsewhere.
Glocals.com is a social network that started out in Geneva and now operates further afield, although the Lake Geneva region remains its heart and soul. The local nature of the site, with city groups, and the events organized by the owners over the years have made it a hit with people, especially newcomers, looking for entertainment and ways to meet other people. The “latest things to do” is a popular feature, as are the classifieds. The “Guides” by sponsors provide bullet point lists that are easy to follow, mainly useful for newcomers to Switzerland on topics like banking and insurance. The city guides are collections of addresses with starred reviews by Glocals members. The owners recently started a new online group buying business, BuyClub.ch, and Glocals members receive alerts about the offers there.
Title: Leman expat fair
Location: Morges, Vaud
Link out: Click here
Description: A great opportunity to meet businesses, services, social clubs, schools and churches that will help you integrate into the Swiss lifestyle! Free entrance.
Date: 27 Sep 2009
London, England and Beijing, China (GenevaLunch) – England made a great start to the second test, winning the toss and putting on 196 runs before the first wicket fell. Australia then fought back and destroyed the English middle order, only captain Andrew Strauss maintaining resistance with an unbeaten 161 runs. England ended on 364-6, a respectable score but nowhere near what could have been achieved. Details, Guardian
Meanwhile Beijing witnessed a rather different game of cricket between expats and refugees, reports UNHCR in Geneva, the UN refugee organization.
This is the third and last of three articles that together make up the English version of a feature published 2 April 2009 by Swiss news weekly L’Hebdo magazine on expatriates in the Lake Geneva region. GenevaLunch, a partner of l’Hebdo brings you the English version.
French version © 2009 l’Hebdo
English version © 2009 GenevaLunch (may not be reproduced in part or whole without written permission.)
[Part 3, continued] By Julie Zaugg and Mehdi Atmani
How did Switzerland become a nation of expats?
French-speaking Switzerland has an attractive infrastructure, with an international airport at the edge of Geneve, efficient public transport, good hospitals and top universities that are at the front lines of research and serve as conduits for interesting technology transfers,” says Blaise Matthey, director of the Fédération des entreprise romandes (French-speaking business federation).
This is the second of three articles that together make up the English version of a feature published 2 April 2009 by Swiss news weekly L’Hebdo magazine on expatriates in the Lake Geneva region. GenevaLunch, a partner of l’Hebdo brings you the English version.
French version © 2009 l’Hebdo
English version © 2009 GenevaLunch (may not be reproduced in part or whole without written permission.
[Part 2, continued] By Julie Zaugg and Mehdi Atmani In Geneva alone there are 65,000 expats, of whom 40,000 are international organization employees and their families. Philip Morris in Lausanne employs 180 of them, Japan Tobacco International, also in Lausanne 157, Procter & Gamble in Geneva 500 and Nestlé in Vevey 584.
Where do they come from?
Americans were still the majority of expats just a few years ago, but they’ve given way to Europeans, with the Schengen Area and the free movement of people as the impetus. Read more…
Swiss news weekly L’Hebdo magazine 2 April publishes a feature article on expatriates in the Lake Geneva region. GenevaLunch, a partner of l’Hebdo brings you the English version in three parts.
French version © 2009 l’Hebdo
English version © 2009 GenevaLunch (may not be reproduced in part or whole without written permission.
By Julie Zaugg and Mehdi Atmani
They have their own schools, media and even neighbourhoods where they live. But who are these expatriates? Spotlight on this comfortably well-off and discreet community that lives side by side with the Swiss, without really mixing with them.
The Expats are among us
“Bonjour, hello – can I help you?” smiles the saleswoman in a children’s clothing shop. At the Chavannes-de-Bogis shopping centre English is ever-present, from the supermarket checkout to the self-service restaurant. Sometimes a word or two of German surfaces, or Swedish or Hindi. Not surprsing: we’re in the middle of a stretch that runs from Versoix to Nyon, which houses the largest concentration of expats in Switzerland.
Little is known about this population, despite the large number of these workers who come to Switzerland for several years, sent by companies and international organizations. L’Hebdo takes a closer look.
How many of them are there?
There are no precise figures for this population because expats melt into the group of holders of B permits, renewable residence permits for non-European Union members. But there are an estimated 100,000 in French-speaking Switzerland – nearly the same size as the population of Lausanne. In Geneva alone there are 65,000 expats, some 40,000 of whom work for international organizations, with their families.
GenevaLunch will continue the article Friday afternoon 3 April.
The International Herald Tribune looks at the management relocation successes and failures of multinationals, with 68% showing they are still relocating employees at record rates but that many companies are still not doing enough for families to ensure the moves work out well.
GenevaLunch will be at Expat-Expo, table J9, where you can view our fresh new site and learn more about the Lake Geneva region's online community newspaper!
Transparence SA, a Geneva-based company founded in 2007 by Veerle Vanwauwe to promote clean gold through its online retail platform, transparencedesign.com, was named by IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) in July as one of its Women Environmental Entrepreneurs. She was invited to participate in its world congress in Barcelona, Spain this week but Vanwauwe returns home in time to join Expat-Expo as one of its newcomer exhibitors. [Ed. note: See Vanwauwe interview in GL, "Real hope diamonds are traceable"]
Expat-Expo is in its third year in Geneva and while the newness of a fair aimed at the Lake Geneva area’s English-speaking population has worn off, the interest has not.
Title: Leman expat fair
Location: Morges, Vaud
Description: Businesses that can help you integrate into your new Swiss lifestyle
Date: 2008-11-09
Title: Expat-expo
Location: Geneva
Description: over 200 exhibitors are Expected, plenty of resources at hand for all expats
Date: 2008-10-12
Updated 12 July, photos added
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Edipresse, which owns most of the major newspapers in the Lake Geneva region and has a part in some of the radio stations, said Thursday evening at a conference in Geneva that it will soon be giving public radio WRS radio listeners in the region “another choice” when it begins broadcasting regularly on Radio Cité. The content will come from Swisster, the online English site that the media group created in March and which replaced the English Corner, a few web paragraphs in English, produced for years by the Tribune de Geneve. Swisster carries news items and information for expatriates.
Photo, top, by Catherine Nelson-Pollard: visitors to the 2007 Leman Expat Fair: English-speakers in the region are perceived as a new market by many Swiss companies. Expat Expo in Geneva also has a large number of companies lined up to sell their services and products to this population.
The announcement was made during a sales pitch about Swisster by Patrick Aebischer, president of EPFL, and Edipresse executives, to a group of regional business people at Procter & Gamble in Geneva.
EPFL’s students, 40% of whom are international, and the polytechnic institute’s international faculty and visiting researchers, are an increasingly popular target market for many English-language businesses, social networks and web sites in the region.
Radio Cité is a non-profit station in Geneva that has had financial difficulties for several years. It recently found an additional CHF1-2 million a year through Viviane de Witt’s Foundation des Chênes, created in 2006, and it has now applied for a Geneva FM radio concession, or license, that will be awarded in autumn by Ofcom, the federal communications office. It is one of two stations applying for the license: the other is Radio Meyrin.
Radio Cité’s application, with the detailed descriptions required by Ofcom of what it offers listeners, makes no mention of English. Edipresse, in announcing Thursday evening its new radio role, provided no details of the financial arrangement.
Photo: the news team at WRS in Geneva, December 2007
When WRG evolved into WRS, or World Radio Switzerland, a public station, in November 2007, it left no commercial radio in English in the area. WRS has a national vocation, with federal funding through SSR, Swiss Public. It is broadcast nationally only on DAB, which requires a DAB radio and at this level the station still has a limited following. It is picked up in much of the Lake Geneva region on FM radio, which is how listeners in the Lake Geneva region listened to WRG, and WRS has maintained that strong link.
Image, courtesy of Ofcom: “Arc lémanique” license area. Click on image to enlarge.
Lac Léman is another group bidding for a radio license, with a mission to broadcast in English. The would-be commercial station is based in Nyon and is applying for an “Arc lémanique” license that extends from just outside Geneva to Neuchatel. It is
one of six groups vying for four of these licenses, to be awarded in autumn.
It is owned by Hugh Quennec, Swiss and Canadian financier and owner of the Geneva Servette ice hockey team. The would-be station shows a CHF1.8 million budget for its first year, that will nearly double by the third, in its application documents registered with Ofcam. The second name on the request is that of Isabelle Cornut, to whom WRG outsourced its advertising sales.
While the radio war for English listeners builds, the number of English sites that provide services or information also appears be growing in the region. One of the newcomers is the Geneva Community – which rose from the ashes of WRG, created by a community group that owned 2% of the former commercial radio station. The new non-profit group provides a service to local businesses, allowing members to post events, products and services.
EPFL’s president, Patrick Aebischer, pulled in a crowd for the Thursday evening talk at P&G, on Swiss innovation and the role of multinationals. He noted, in introducing Swisster at the end, that the federal polytechnic institute had “helped finance” the Edipresse English-language commercial venture. Swisster’s business model is bulk corporate subscriptions, with companies offering the product to their employees. He referred to it as the “first Swiss online daily in English.”
Ed. note: Aebischer’s misunderstanding can only be explained by an oversight on the part of the journalists at Swisster, since Edipresse has worked in the past with GenevaLunch. GenevaLunch, available since 2006, is the first Swiss online daily in English, and it now plays a significant role in the international community as one of the most-visited sites in English in the region.
