Created in 1999, the Raymond Lemaire Fund aims at raising funds for the training of young heritage professionals. Professor Raymond Lemaire, one of the founders of ICOMOS, attached the greatest importance to training young professionals and welcoming them into the ICOMOS family.
Since 1981, at every General Assembly, ICOMOS has awarded the Piero Gazzola Prize to a person or group of persons who has worked with distinction towards the objectives of ICOMOS. In 1999, the General Assembly in Mexico passed Resolution 29, which envisaged complementing this Prize by the creation of an International Fund named after Raymond Lemaire designed to raise funds for training young heritage professionals.
Endorsed in March 2008 by the Executive Committee, the Fund was launched during the Forum for young professionals held at the 16th General Assembly that year, among other with the generous support of the children of Raymond Lemaire.
The objective is to offer bursaries and to establish cooperation arrangements with training organisations, to enable young heritage professionals throughout the whole world to take part in post-graduate courses or traineeships in conservation and restoration. The Fund currently holds around 9300 Euros, kindly donated by individual ICOMOS members, ICOMOS Belgium, and ICOMOS experts who contributed their WMF Watch List review fees.
Criteria for attributing scholarships are being developed by the Executive Committee. A first report on the use of the Fund will be made to the 18th General Assembly, where a first bursary will be awarded.
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Last 18 April, on International Day on Monuments and Sites, we celebrated Heritage for generations. The Emerging Professionals Working Group coordinated the event in a spirit of intergenerational exchanges to safeguard and promote heritage. Activities were aimed at fostering fruitful intergenerational dialogue. These included, but were not limited to: conferences, training sessions, roundtables, poster campaigns, evenings with question and answer games between younger and older members professionals and non-professionals, interactive tours of heritage and other kind of sites.
