The health crisis has accentuated the drop in the number of people who give their time to charitable, cultural and sporting structures, and their rejuvenation. Faced with this disaffection, associative leaders are looking for solutions.
by Claire Ané
Who said volunteering was in crisis? Adrien Richard, 32, launched, at the end of 2020, on the Jeveuxaider.gouv.fr platform. “I had been thinking about it for a long time, but I had the vision of associations not very organized, with volunteers who have to manage and sacrifice themselves,” he says. In these times of health crisis, where we talked a lot about the isolated elderly people, he chose the Claude Pompidou Foundation, and regularly visits an old lady with Alzheimer’s disease. Katia Pereira Dos Santos, 45, already a volunteer of an association for the maintenance of peasant agriculture, has been involved in parallel, since June, in the creation of an “associative café and third place” called La Fabrique, to Issy-les-Moulineaux (Hauts-de-Seine).
They are among the volunteers, often students or active, who have joined associations since the start of the health crisis linked to the COVVI-19. Arrivals that were not enough to compensate for the departures of older and highly involved people. The number of volunteers working within an association in France has decreased by 15 % in two years: it has increased from 13 million to 11 million, one fifth of the adult population, according to an Ifop-france volunteer survey Directed in January. “Direct” volunteering, apart from any structure, has progressed.
The decline was particularly marked in cultural associations. “The sector has been closed for a long time. Some volunteers were disgusted to hear that culture was not essential, not to mention the” stop and go “which complexified management and burdened finances”, analyzes the president of coordination Federations and associations of culture and communication, Marie-Claire Martel. Civil security is also struggling: “During the covid, we had to overshash the volunteers and we could not ensure the training of new recruits, which takes time. This sector requires greater availability than Others “, explains the president of the Order of Malta France, Cédric Chalret du Rieu.
” Need to listen to volunteers “
Conversely, some themes are increasingly mobilizing. President of the network of animal student associations, Christophe Gaydier notes “many creations in environmental protection, in the fight against discrimination and against student precariousness”. Associations of aid to the excluded, where a large part of the volunteers work, have, for their part, limited the losses, even increased their workforce.
You have 74.16% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.