Short bio

Education has always been a common factor in my professional life. I started as a social worker in a medical-educational institute, continued as head of an association for professional integration, and then directed a group of higher education establishments for 20 years. For the past 10 years, I have been working in the Red Cross training programme and designing and implementing social and educational innovation projects.

My story

I joined the Red Cross training programme at a time when its various training institutes had just obtained their Erasmus charter. I very quickly realised that the Erasmus+ programme, beyond mobility in Europe of course, provided a great opportunity to work on innovative projects in the field of training, and more particularly in the field of adult education.

Indeed, the links between the programme's priorities and the values of the Red Cross are obvious, and it seemed essential to provide training and solutions for people in vulnerable situations. For me, there was an urgent need to highlight their skills and talents and to involve them in designing the tools we were developing.

One of the first projects I led was to create a training course for home care workers. I remember the first week of work with our European partners and in particular with home care professionals. One of them came to me and said, “It's crazy, I never did studies, but I have skills!” The emotion and pride in the eyes of this woman remains an unforgettable moment for me.

She intensified my desire to continue this work. The next project came about at that time. Highlighting the skills of the most vulnerable, fighting against their self-discrimination, making them aware of their power to act, and changing the way the outside world looks at them, became imperative for me.

We are so lucky at times like this to work with European partners who share the same desire to bring about change.

For me, it is essential to work both with and for the people we are addressing, to mutually enrich each other's skills. Indeed, designing projects is great, but they must also be tested in the field, adapted and enriched by personal experiences. I often say that you have to be an engineer as well as a handyman to succeed in a project.

The project I am most happy with is Clichés. The name alone is a counterbalance to force us to break out of these clichés, especially those regarding vulnerability.

I have long been convinced, because I have also experienced it, that we are all, at some point in our lives, vulnerable and powerless in the face of events. Yet, if we think about it, there are plenty of moments when, thanks to a word, a person, a piece of music, or whatever the trigger, we take action.

I think that becoming aware of our own vulnerability helps us to better understand the vulnerability of others, and this allows us to find ways of taking action, both with and for others. Breaking out of clichés means discovering that you don't have to be a hero to get involved.

Clichés is a method used in many training actions in Europe, based on moments in the lives of people participating in the training, where they were able to act. It involves identifying with them and for them how they managed to take steps and decisions that enabled them to get out of a situation that seemed impossible to overcome. Clichés highlights their capabilities through a unique and inspiring story. It is also a podcast that has now had two seasons.

This project, like the others, was inspired by my grandmother. This woman, who nurtured my childhood, arrived in France at the age of 20, without speaking a word of French. She worked as a housekeeper and her life was full of hardship. Yet she spent her life helping others, always ready to encourage, to move forward, to educate herself, for she who had only been to school for one year, considered that without education nothing was possible.