City Councilman Kwanza Hall and French Consul General Denis Barbet

With France Atlanta 2012 barely over, the planning for next year’s programs already has begun.

Members of the Consulate General of France reviewed on Dec 11 some of the preparations for France Atlanta 2013 during a meeting of Atlanta City Council’s Advisory Committee on International Relations.

The meeting was held at the Lenox Building in Buckhead where the “Maison de France,” composed of the consulate, the French-American Chamber of Commerce, and other French organizations, is located.

City Councilman Kwanza Hall, who chairs the city’s international relations committee, thanked Denis Barbet, France’s consul general for the Southeast, for providing the members of the committee and interested persons the opportunity to learn about the ideas for next year’s program.

Mr. Barbet said that the purpose of the France-Atlant programs is to deepen relations between France and the Southeast by encouraging cooperation over a wide assortment of disciplines through annual events. France Atlanta 2013 will be the fourth, the first having been launched in 2010.

David Kibler, the cultural attaché, said that a major focus would be a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the “I have a dream speech” that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered on Aug. 28, 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Claire Collobert, press attaché, who is organizing the humanitarian program, said that her main focus would be on human trafficking, primarily the trafficking of children around the world.

Nicholas Florsch, attaché for science and technology, said that the ties bringing the cancer research at Emory University and the Oncopole, a cancer research center in Atlanta’s sister city Toulouse, France, would be further developed.

In 2012, 15 French-American scientific, business, cultural and humanitarian events were held in October through November.

To learn more about France Atlanta, click here.