The Hunger Brigade
Project Street Address
Project City
Project Province/State
Project Postal/Zip Code
Project Country
Quel est le problème principal auquel votre action cherche à s’attaquer?
Two problems: the first is that every night, hundreds of food establishments (bakeries, fruit sellers, etc.) throw away kilos of unsold food and even go as far as to spray foodstuffs with gas in order to make them inedible. Why? Because, for health reasons, French law does not permit these bakeries to give away their food. The second problem is that every night, hundreds of homeless people are hungry, cold and alone in the streets. These people need attention and support.
Champ de Travail
justice sociale /droits de l’homme
Si votre Champ de Travail est dans « autres » définissez-le ci-dessous en 1-2 mots
Année du démarrage du projet (ou date prévue de démarrage) (aaaa)
2007
URL Video YouTube
URL du Projet (ou autre lien à tout reportage/ couverture médiatique)
Name Your Project
Describe Your Idea
Description du projet
A twofold project: - trigger and develop in students the desire to participate in non-profit and charity organizations. - Go, in groups of 3 to 4 young people, to meet street people, give them something to drink and eat and spend time with them.
Idée est unique et différente
The idea is to help those that are most disadvantaged. An increasing number of organizations now invite homeless people to share meals, but sometimes it seems difficult for some street people to come to terms with their situation and to have the courage to attend these events. These people remain in the streets without any social support. The idea of the Hunger Brigade is to go out to meet the most marginalized street people. To meet them, talk with them and share with them, by offering them sandwiches, fruit, pastries, salads, coffee, tea and hot chocolate, as well as sleeping bags. However, the emotional contact and social interaction the Hunger Brigade brings appears to be what is most important in their eyes.
Planning
The project plan for the next 6 months is to develop the Hunger Brigade, improving and increasing its social impact on homeless people. This will mean diversifying the service that the association offers. A potential project would be to offer street people meals that could keep for several days. In addition, we plan to contribute to helping the maximum number of students discover social and humanitarian activities. Giving of one’s time and meeting people who are different makes this an enriching experience for every one that tries it.
Partenariats
It is more relevant to talk about sponsorship. We met a man who for 2 years spent most of his evenings distributing sandwiches from a bakery to street people in Paris. This man, Jean-Claude Michel, allowed us to benefit from his closeness to the mayor of the 16th arrondissement in Paris, enabling us also to be authorized to collect sandwiches that had not been sold at end of day in the same bakery. We then negotiated the right to collect not only sandwiches but also salads, bread and baguettes with which we made sandwiches, adding ingredients bought by the association. Winning Jean-Claude Michel’s trust and that of the bakery, and carefully maintaining these relations, certainly provided us with the most important outside assistance to the association throughout the first year.
Impact
In its five months of existence, the Hunger Brigade has to date met 150 homeless people. We would like to double or even triple this number in the 2008/2009 school year.
Efficacité
The Hunger Brigade has distributed sleeping bags, over 400 sandwiches and as many cups of coffee and tea to close to 150 street people. These numbers are increasing constantly. In addition, close to 70 students have had the experience of spending time in an association and with disadvantaged people. Many of them have come back.
Obstacles
The main obstacle we face is time. As students, we don’t have time to organize more “missions”. In addition, the lack of funds will certainly soon become a problem. It was not my main objective when I launched the association: in my opinion, the search for partners such as bakeries was and has been more fruitful than the search for financial partners. But this problem needs to be reconsidered now if we want to take our social impact to a higher level. Lastly, we will have to increase the number of students if we want to meet more homeless people.
Issue Selector
(ou comment pensez-vous financer votre action)
We have raised 500 Euros in donations from companies and friends. Jean-Claude Michel lent us his shed to make the sandwiches and make up the bags and teams for each mission. He has now retired and we no longer have this shed.
En dehors de la pérennité financière, comment proposez-vous de développer et de soutenir votre projet ?
Le recours à des partenaires type boulangerie est selon moi plus bénéfique et meilleur qu'une contribution financière. Plus nous travaillons avec ces partenaires, moins il y a de nourriture inutilement gâchée. Nous réfléchissons à l'éventualité de fournir des vêtements, des trousses de toilette etc. Si nous parvenons à établir des partenariats dans cette démarche, nous pourrons pallier au manque de financements.
Financement
Our association currently has 13 members but we are going to recruit an as yet undetermined number of students to be full-time members of the association, in addition to those who join us periodically. Each member belongs to a committee: the board is in charge of the general management of the association, a committee organizes the missions, another works on relationships between the association and the corporate world, and another is in charge of communication. We have four bakeries that are more or less active partners. We also work in partnership with a bar, which serves as a meeting place after our missions.
Financement créatif
We have written a simple and enthusiastic outreach letter to companies. As regards our other partners, we simply went to meet them and made our proposal after presenting our project.
Autres besoins non financiers
We need more partners that could provide us with varied foodstuffs: why not butchers, produce sellers or drink brands? We also need sleeping bags, clothing and health care items
Motivation
A friend and I were lucky enough to be able to offer sandwiches to homeless people in Angers by chance one evening. Too much food had been prepared by the organizers of an event at our school and we offered to distribute the sandwiches in the town of Angers. It seems pretty obvious today: we came upon a group of 15 street people with whom we shared a long and memorable evening - memorable because the evening was so joyful. This brief experience pleased us immediately; offering meals to homeless people in need and the easy and simple relationship established with them were very enriching from a human point of view. This is the moment that made us want to develop this initiative and encourage students to participate in it.
Prix ou récompenses
This field has not been completed. (83 words or less)
Contexte
L'initiative des jeunes est de plus en plus répandue, et celle-ci doit encore se développer tellement elle est importante et utile. Quand au changement social, difficile de le résumer en quelques phrases, mais je dirais simplement que le nombre de gens dans le besoin atteint des chiffres déconcertants. Les spectateurs de ces dérives sociales ont selon moi de plus en plus l'impression qu'ils peuvent contribuer à améliorer quelque chose. C'est très positif, mais il faut encore que cela progresse. Et cette dynamique commence par l'implication de la jeunesse.
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