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Wow, 2019 has a been a great year and it's not over yet! We want to take some time now to stop, reflect and celebrate what we have achieved so far. We are also super excited about what is yet to come.
Looking back on 2019
Sojoourn has become an ONLYLYON expert, known as the first company based in Lyon for newcomers and expatriates.
We were featured in the ONLYLYON collector guide, that collects the best hand-picked nightlife, restaurants, shopping or unusual addresses. It's a free guide available at the Tourist's office, at place Bellecour.
We've launched our conversational French courses with native and experienced French teachers who have also experienced expatriation.
We have created a membership pass called “Tribe Member” for our community. It gives access to all our networking events (ApéroExpats and CaféExpats) for free and several discounts. One-hour consulting with our founder, Emmanuelle is also included to answer all your questions (or to use for an accompaniment to the Prefecture, to the doctor...according to your needs)
We've launched a new event called CaféExpats to offer more networking possibilities for expat parents, to help them bond over breakfast.
Our community has doubled in size. Yeah! We have reached over a 1000 Sojoourners in our Facebook group. Sojoourn has become such a rich and diverse community. We have been hosting on average 3 events every month.
We celebrated our first anniversary at Mowgli café with Lyon Expat Agency, one of our trusted partners.
We have organised more than 30 events throughout 2019: many ApéroExpats but also wine & cheese tastings, walking city tours and professional workshops.
With put our community at the heart of everything we do, we are constantly improving ourselves and refining our services and events to better support the expats. We are really focused on helping the integration of the members of our community.
We take the time to get to know each person, their challenges, difficulties and future plans.
We partnered with Lyon Expat Agency, a relocation agency and PartirAssur, an assurance company to better support you. We will continue to look for mutually beneficial collaborations to be able to offer the best support, stress-free!
Some of our greatest achievements
We hosted and supported a range of successful events throughout 2019.
Our first pop-up desk: The Sojoourn Welcome Desk at ONLYLYON Pavillon at Place Bellecour.
Partnered with Juliette Potin (coach), Manika Mey ( HR consultant) and Flexjob to host several career workshops.
Partnered with Juliette Potin (coach) to host an IKIGAI workshop.
Partnered with Stela Klein (executive coach) to host a life balance workshop.
Partnered with Marion Giroudin, to host a workshop about being a freelancer in France.
Partnered with Nina Coates, a yoga teacher to host yoga classes (in 2020, we will host one yoga class every month).
A heartfelt thank you
Thank you to everyone who has contributed and became a part of what makes Sojoourn such a supportive, collaborative and empowering community.
Sojoourn wouldn't exist without its community.
A special thank you to three of our lovely members: Lorelie Labbe, who did a fantastic job creating content to our social media platforms (Facebook and Instagram) and to our website for several months; Rita Saliba, who gave me such good advice to grow Sojoourn further and Silviu Pal, our unofficial photographer, who takes all the beautiful pictures of our ApéroExpats events.
And all the people who are already a part of Sojoourn as our French teachers (Christel De Villepin, Laure Dumont, Sarah de Leiris and Valerie Albaladejo), Tribe Members and Tribe Leaders. There are others behind the scenes helping, mentoring and advising. Together we are building a brand and a community that is providing real and meaningful support for so many individuals and businesses. Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for your trust and to believe in Sojoourn. I hope we can go much further together in the upcoming years.
What's next?
There are a lot of new and exciting projects coming and we are currently working on a big step to grow even more in 2020 and beyond. We look forward to crossing paths with you if we haven't already; to working with our partners and collaborators; and to bringing you along our journey.
Sojoourn is on a mission to be the driving force that makes France the best place in the world for expats. We foster an environment that creates the greatest opportunities for expats to succeed.
See you in the new year.
Emmanuelle, Founder & CEO
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