They witness
- Arnaud Fimat, volunteer founding president of Un Debut de Réseau
- Aurélie Renard, volunteer
- Rebecca Shankland, university professor in developmental psychology
- Ilios Kotsou, doctor in psychology and member of Mind & Life Europe
- Jessica Morton, health psychology researcher at UC Louvain.
A united platform
The associative platform Un Debut de Réseau brings together young people in integration and active or retired professionals. The goal? Match their profile on this digital network and ensure that young people aged 18 to 26, without qualifications, excluded from employment but actively engaged in an integration process, exchange with well-integrated employees to give them a boost.
This booster can be a telephone exchange on a targeted sector, a profession, a job search technique, contacts, reassurance… everything is possible.
Build quality relationships
Launched in February 2022, Un Debut de Réseau, a completely free initiative, currently has 80 partner structures (Epide, 2nd chance school and Local Missions) which bring together around 600 young people and more than 2,000 volunteers.
350 messages are exchanged on average every day on the platform and at the end of June, 10 CDIs were already signed. Mostly in corporate adult volunteers.
Arnaud Fimat, volunteer founding president of Un Debut de Réseau.
“Our goal is not to seek to have 3 million people on the platform but to achieve quality. We will probably reach a little less than 30% of young people in integration, but that’s already it. We will at least have familiarized them with the digital tool. Because even if they spend a lot of time on their phone, we realized that 8 out of 10 young people did not have an email address.he concludes with humility.
Testimonial: Aurélie Renard, volunteer for Un Debut de Réseau
Aurélie Renard has the associative commitment pegged to the body. Sensitive to the subject of equal opportunities and the essential dimension of a network to start her professional life, she naturally joined Un Debut de Réseau in February 2022.
To start my career, I had the chance to benefit from a network thanks to my family circle and I know how much that makes the difference. It’s my turn to help these young people by giving them some codes.
Aurélie Renard, communication consultant and coach.
To be really useful and not disperse, Aurélie Renard has chosen to support one young person at a time. “After telephone exchanges to identify his need and not embroil him in my own ideas, I decided to help Hanour, a young woman who arrived in France two years ago, who wants to become a special education teacher. She wanted to find her way through work-study training leading to this profession and prepare for interviews. I put her in touch with the daughter of a friend doing the same journey,” she says willingly. Hanour is finally admitted to training. Aurélie now helps her find a host company, by activating her own network. “She contacts me when she needs to. We exchange one to two hours a month. You always have to be able to measure the time you give people so that they are not disappointed. This technique of small steps is also very satisfying for me because my commitment bears fruit quickly and concretely. I feel useful.” she believes.
Psychological lighting: a voluntary commitment, paying for managers
Volunteering can also have a positive impact on your professional life. “Solidarity involves several dimensions. First of all, a capacity for empathy which allows us to identify the needs of the other, ”underlines Rebecca Shankland, university professor in developmental psychology, author of These links that make us live (Odile Jacob) in Grand Bien vous Fasse on France Inter.
In the same program, Ilios Kotsou, doctor in psychology and member of Mind & Life Europe, specifies that solidarity is “benevolent attention to others and a form of unconditional attention. We come to the aid of others without them having asked for it, without whether they deserve it or not and without knowing who they are”. By being altruistic, one is decentered from oneself. Ideal for a manager who must move away from his only point of view to integrate and deal with those of his team. “By being confronted with other realities, those of the people he accompanies, a manager must think about how to provide an audible message to the other. Defining, selecting, ordering and disseminating this information… so many actions to refine his communication which allow him to think about his way of working on a daily basis. In the end, this increases its range of managerial solutions,” argues Jessica Morton, researcher in health psychology at UC Louvain. This kind of selfless commitment creates a positive drive. What Ilios Kotsou calls “the virtuous circle of altruism. More generous people are happier. And people happier, more generous. Always inspiring to encourage a more benevolent management.