Crowdfunding saves French chateau
■ $ 1.9 million raised online to restore La Mothe- Chandeniers
Poitiers, France, Dec. 27: It’s a modern story of an ancient fairytale castle: a crowdfunding effort online has raised $ 1.9 million to restore a chateau in western France.
Around 25,000 people from 115 countries have become shareholders in the chateau de La MotheChandeniers which has turrets, a moat and an elderly owner who had not maintained it.
The 19th- century building has fallen into disrepair with trees and vegetation sprouting out of its roof and windows, raising fears that it might be knocked down and redeveloped by property developers.
Thanks to a joint effort by online fundraising site Dartagnans. fr and a local association Adopte un Chateau ( Adopt a Chateau), sufficient money has been raised to buy and restore the structure.
“It’s a record in France and probably in Europe in terms of the amount raised and the number of contributors,” the head of Dartagnans, Romain Delaume, said the news agency on Tuesday.
The website offered buyers the chance to become shareholders in the castle at the cost of 51 euros: 50 euros as a donation for the restoration work and one euro to buy a share in a joint company set up to manage the site.
Organisers initially hoped for around 10,000 people, but thanks partly to reports in the French media the final number of donors came in at just under 19,000.
Many of them bought shareholdings for friends and family as presents, meaning that the total number of owners of the chateau will be around 25,000.
Most of them are from France, but people from as far afield as Afghanistan, Burkina Faso and Peru now have a small slice of history in the French countryside near the wine- growing Loire valley.
“Bravo for this initiative both collective and private,” wrote the aristocratic speaker of France’s parliament, Francois de Rugy, on Twitter. “France’s historic buildings need a diverse range of ideas to be saved and developed.”