Pro Peyresq
The association Pro Peyresq is created by Toine and Mady Smets, Georges Lambeau, Lucien and Jane Jacquet in 1954 with the participation of Jacques and Jacqueline Waefelaer, in order to restore the village of Provence of Peyresq.
The goal of association, as wrote it Toine Smets, is " to learn with young intellectuals the value, satisfactions and tirednesses of manual work: to attach to a task which can inspire to them by the enthusiasm, which requires devotion and solidarity and urges them to be essential a discipline. Then, to get to them at the same time the occasion of a stimulative cure in a very healthy climate, as well physically as morally, and in a merry atmosphere; their to give the opportunity to test itself with the techniques of the trades of art: pottery, ceramics, ironwork, spinning, weaving, painting, decoration, work of wood, the stone… (Finally), to give again life with picturesque local activities. By bringing together in a hard and imposing site university and student students of the Art schools, various disciplines, linked by the effort in a common goal, " Pro Peyresq" create conditions extremely favorable to exchanges, and brings a corrective measure to the partitioning created by the studies spécialisées".
Other universities repurchase houses: the Universit3e libre de Bruxelles, but also those of Liege, Mons and Gembloux. Pro Peyresq becomes a federation of owners groups of their house to be restored or their ruin to be rebuilt, the rate/rhythm adapting to the possibilities of each one, following the plans of the architect Pierre Lamby. Between 1953 and 1956, one equipped the houses with Running water, of electricity and the access road to the village was tarred. Pro Peyresq financially helped the involved in debt municipality.
Peyresq becomes little by little a vacation village when interfere themselves French resulting from the families origin, estivants come from the coast and especially from the Belgians, students and persons in charge of Pro Peyresq. Some tensions were born between two nationalities because the mayor had blocked the sales with French families with the profit of Pro Peyresq. But with the courses of the years the problems were solved little by little.
Rebuilding work having been finished, Pro Peyresq is devoted exclusively to its function of vacation center for students, old student or quite simply of the people come there by the word of mount. In 1972, Mady Smets replaces her husband with the head of Pro Peyresq and also develops the humanistic side of Peyresq by making some a meeting place between High Schools and the organization of conferences. It creates for that ASBL Nicolas Claude Fabri de Peyresq in 1978.
In 1980, Mady Smets and Jane Jacquet, respectively president and general secretary of Pro Peyresq, receive the second price of the " Chiefs of work in péril" for the village of Peyresq of the hands of the president Valery Giscard d'Estaing as well as the price " Europa Nostra" hands of Lord Duncan Sandys.
With beginning of the year 90, a divergence from point of view taking place relating to the goal having to be continued by Pro Peyresq, Mady Smets leaves the presidency to create a new association, Peyresq Foyer of Humanism which, related to the ASBL Nicolas Claude Fabri de Peiresc, is devoted to the university conferences and meetings, while Jane Jacquet and Jacqueline Waefelaer continue Pro Peyresq.
At the end of 2004, Pro Peyresq celebrates his 50 years with the Town hall of Brussels. The persons in charge of various Universities as of the représantants of the various generations present at Peyresq spoke about their bonds with the village, while the president of Pro Peyresq, Eric Waefelaer, recalled the existence of Pro Peyresq and paid homage to the two surviving pillars, Mady Smets and Jacqueline Waefelaer, like in Pierre Lamby.
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