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Where do I start?

Welcome to our online partner search!

It has been designed to help create new twinnings and partnerships between local and regional authorities from Europe and their counterparts from the South. You can either:

Look through the list of towns or regions who are seeking partners for twinning or partnership, or
Fill in the online form to let others know that your town or region actively seeks a partner.

Please note that this part of our website can only accept requests for north-south partnerships. If you are a European local authority seeking a twinning partner in Europe, please check the Twinning in Europe part of our website; similarly, it cannot register requests for South-South partnerships.

How does it work?

As with most forms, there are a few steps to follow.

The first is to provide us with contact details about your town or region. The moment this is done, an automatic email will be sent to the email address you have typed in, providing you with a login and password. The only point of this login and password is to enable you and you only to have permanent access to your online ad, in order to amend it if you wish to do so. We suggest you save that email for future use.

You will see that we have split the whole form into a number of screens. This enables the system to save the parts of the form that you have completed, to avoid you having to start everything from the beginning again in case you have to stop in mid-stream, or have a technical problem, for instance.

Also please pay attention to the fields marked with an asterisk; they indicate rubrics that cannot be ignored, or else you would have to start that screen again. Most of these compulsory fields are only for identification or contact purposes.

Please be aware that once completed, your "seeking a partner" form will not appear immediately on the website. Instead, it is automatically sent to our partner, United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) who check all requests to filter out non genuine ads, therefore protecting the integrity of your request; UCLG will then put your request online. Please note that, in some cases, it could take several days for your request to be accessible to all on the website.

To avoid spamming: On the first screen, you will notice a box containing characters in various colours and shape. Their function is to keep automated "spamming" devices away from the online form. Please type in the sequence of characters shown in the text box next to it. Locating where you are: many potential partners will find it helpful to have a rough idea of where, in your country, your municipality or region is located. This is why we have included an interactive map of Europe. Simply click on the red location symbol on the map, and drag it where you wish. Please note that you can zoom in and out of the map for your comfort (top left corner of the map).

Photographs and videos: The website also gives you the possibility to insert photographs and video clips of your local authority. If such photographs and videos are already on a page of another website, simply copy the address of that website page, and paste it in the text box on the form. Alternatively, you could upload (place) videoclips on (for example) google video, and then copy and paste the link onto the form. More information on this is available in the form itself.

A few practical tips

Text boxes: You will find a number of text boxes on the form. These are at your disposal to add any information that is not on the form. However, please keep in mind that whatever information you type in these boxes will not be translated.