Empowering young people through self-organisation
[Translation : EPALE France]
Camélia El Ouariachi Executive Director of Destins Liés, a self-organisation movement driven by young people who are directly affected by inequality. Her background and vision of the collective resonate with the values of fable-Lab.
Tell us about your background.
I am a descendant of Moroccan immigrants and heir to this part of my history, which is very important to me. I was born and raised in Troyes, in the Champagne-Ardenne region, and I have always been surrounded by powerful women who collectively gave each other strength through shared childcare arrangements, mutual support and community.
School was presented as the golden ticket to “making it”. I was a fairly good student, and I was lucky enough to have a preparatory class for Sciences Po Paris, the Paris Institute of Political Studies, at my secondary school through priority education agreements. I had no idea what Sciences Po was - nobody in my family had ever gone there. I was originally going to study medicine, the classic choice: doctor or lawyer.
But the preparatory class appealed to me because current affairs and geopolitics really excited me. I was accepted into Sciences Po Paris and arrived in Paris alone. This was a double blow: the shock of Paris in comparison to other cities in France, and the shock of being a young woman of colour from a working-class background at Sciences Po.
At 18, I felt like there were rules of the game that were designed to prevent people like me from ever having access. Once you’re in, you’re told: either you accept the rules, or... I felt like I had to sell part of who I was to match expectations and codes.
My friends and I said to each other: “You know what? We’re going to create our own game with our own rules.” In the first year of my Master’s degree, I set up a mentoring association with two other people. The idea was simple: I have younger brothers, sisters and cousins who know nothing about student life – CROUS, housing subsidies, grants. I put them in touch with students I know.
That’s when I realised: this is it, I know what drives me. Before getting involved in diplomacy and other countries, if I did something on my own scale, at home, locally, it would have a real impact on people’s real lives.
Destins Liés is a beautiful name! Can you tell us more about the association?
Thank you! I didn’t come up with it, it was the co-founders. This is a group of 8-9 people who are directly affected by systemic inequalities. They had benefited from association programmes, but could never find a space that allowed them to collectively share best practices, learn and become more empowered.
They said to themselves: “We need to create a movement.” It’s not a service-providing association – we don’t do mentoring, we don’t do outreach. The idea was to create an intergenerational movement, because we know we’re not going to reinvent the wheel. We have a history behind us, one that we have inherited.
The name “Destins Liés” (linked destinies) means that we can either get through this together, or it’s going to be complicated. Whether you are from a working-class neighbourhood or a rural area, if you are young and directly affected by these inequalities, our destinies are linked.
We are guided by three values: social justice in the true sense of the word; mutual aid – not solidarity, because for us solidarity implies one hand giving above the other receiving, whereas mutual aid is reciprocal, we are all equal; and dignity, because human dignity and respect for others are non-negotiable.
Why do you think self-organisation is particularly important?
Destins Liés started out as a group of people who were directly affected by the issue and who said to themselves that if they weren’t involved in the decisions that affected them, it would never work. You can have lots of people who have very good ideas and even very good intentions, but if you don’t involve the people who are directly affected by the issue and their experiences, it won’t work.
Our approach is to say: at every stage of the decision-making process, put the people most affected at the heart of things. If tomorrow Destins Liés is asked to help with something that doesn’t concern us, we have no problem saying: “Actually, we’re going to step aside, this isn’t us, it’s someone else.”
We use the Community Organising method - I was trained at Harvard by Marshall Ganz, one of the masterminds behind this approach. When you have time and people but no money, this method allows you to organise yourself to gain more power to act.
I often use the metaphor of a football match: there is a game to be played, and everyone has their role to play. To play that role, there is a strategy: you organise people who will organise other people. Leadership in Community Organising means taking responsibility for empowering others.
What kinds of actions do you take?
In the past, the co-founders launched the “student power” programme, which provided training to CROUS students on how to organise and run campaigns. One example was the campaign to make CROUS grants annual, so that students receive their grants for the whole year rather than just 10 months out of 12, meaning they don’t need to take on a summer job to make ends meet. They also ran campaigns against the exclusion of students during the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
This programme has come to an end, and we are very proud of it because the young people who were mobilised, trained and supported have gone on to launch associations. Some associations were created as a result of this, because these young people understood that they needed to get organised.
Today, we are working on our major vision: to create a national community of mutual support among young people who are directly affected, from collectives, working-class neighbourhoods and rural areas. Our target audience: 16 to 30-year-olds. The aim is to learn about Community Organising in order to gain greater power to act and mutual understanding: knowing which associations in Lille do what; passing on messages such as “I’m looking for an editor” or “I’m looking for someone in communications”; sharing experiences; pooling resources, etc.
We are also launching the first participatory fund by and for the young people who are directly affected. From September to December, we are working with an initial group to lay the common foundations for this mutual aid community.
We also organise intergenerational projects. For example, a film screening and debate around the film La bataille du Petit-Bard which shows a struggle in Montpellier in the 2000s, to show young people that there is a history before us and that we must learn from our elders.
What have you observed about urban and rural areas?
A person living in Mantes-la-Jolie today or someone living 45 minutes from Troyes in a small town face the same difficulties.
They have no means of transport to get to university, and there are no universities in the surrounding area. And even beyond universities, there are no training opportunities. Everything is far away, both geographically and symbolically.
In rural areas, there are no longer any places for young people. When I go out to the countryside, there’s nowhere for them to go – no community centres, no social centres, nothing, it’s deserted. The places where you will find young people are either in educational establishments or in the workplace. But young people who are neither studying nor working are completely off the radar.
It’s the same in urban neighbourhoods, there is a lack of consideration from public authorities. When there is not enough investment, when there is no access to places, and even when pseudo-places are created without putting the people concerned at the heart of the decision-making process, it doesn’t work.
There is a real feeling of not being legitimate. When I go to see young people about projects, their first reaction is: “But why me?” I had young girls who were fundraising for an orphanage in Morocco every weekend. They didn’t realise that they were doing communications, video creation and project development. When I told them “That’s super valuable”, they replied: “But how does that make us legitimate?”
We need to restore legitimacy to young people. Once you have the self-confidence and the tools to take action at the local level, you can build bridges. We work closely with associations such as Rêv’Elle Toi in Grigny, where women from working-class neighbourhoods have been doing incredible work for 13 years.
EPALE is a European platform that looks at issues from a cross-border perspective. Have you exchanged ideas with organisations in other countries?
We had an initial experience with EPALE and Erasmus+: the “Hope Beyond Crisis” seminar organised by the Copenhagen Youth Network which enabled us to make contact with sister organisations: associations in Greece, Moldova, Ukraine, Finland. There were also teams from outside the EU: Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey.
It was very interesting because there was a mix of profiles: in the Finnish team, there were Finns, Egyptians and Palestinians. The Jordanian teams were half Jordanian, half Palestinian.
We shared our observations about the rise of populism and fascism throughout Europe – in the Netherlands, Denmark and Greece. It is becoming increasingly difficult for associations to organise themselves and obtain funding when the political powers are not aligned with their vision. So it is extremely important that we form an international community. What is happening in Europe, Lebanon, Jordan... either we become a community and help each other, or we each advance on our own and waste time and energy, and have less impact.
We exchanged practices - I showed them our Community Organising workshops, and they showed me their workshops with young people. We’ll get back in touch in spring 2026.
I am convinced that many other associations are doing what we are doing. We are very humble; we haven’t invented anything. Bringing people together, empowering them, training them, this happens in every country. The real message to convey is understanding the power of the collective. If we don’t work together, we will never succeed.
Think of a cathedral – cathedrals took centuries to build. We have the cathedral in sight, we are building it. It may take generations and we may not see the end result, but at least we will have done our part in the construction.
Article written by the fable-Lab association for the EPALE platform.
