Since 2006, Dexia Crédit Local has been granting staff who so request 2 hours per month of their working time to help out young people desperately in search of work.
Nathalie Plasse, Programme Director of the Dexia France Foundation, tells us more.
Can you tell us something about the Dexia Crédit Local mentoring process?
It’s about helping young adults in their search for work, through the right advice and follow-up. Their mentors see them once or twice a month at their workplace to help them in their job-seeking efforts, passing on their own experiences of corporate life and helping them with practical tasks such as drafting a CV. This is done to:
- increase young adults’ awareness of their assets and skills;
- set achievable goals that will help them succeed professionally.
Who are these young adults that are being mentored?
They’re aged between 16 and 25, have little in the way of qualifications and, more often than not, are from a deprived background. They have little or no experience of working life and have no relatives to familiarise them with such an environment. We are currently mentoring young people in Argenteuil, Bordeaux, Courbevoie, Clamart, Clermont-Ferrand, Grenoble, Lille, Lyons, Lunéville, Marseilles, Montreuil, Paris, Nanterre, Nantes, Montreuil, Rennes and other cities.
How do you become a mentor?
You just have to volunteer and fill in a few forms. Any interested Dexia Crédit Local member of staff can apply. Each year, we organise a mentors’ meeting but, naturally, current mentors are the best people to elicit cooperation from colleagues.
What feedback have you had about the campaign?
Our mentors are pragmatists who encourage their charges to contact companies that correspond to their project, to compile a contact network, and to dress accordingly for job interviews. In doing so, they increase the young people’s sense of self-value and instil a sense of confidence in them.
All our mentors admit to the gratifying and moving nature of the work and wish to remain involved. Making the acquaintance of these young adults, extending them a helping hand and sharing their eventual successes is an amazing human experience.
See you next week for news of a new solidarity-related Dexia campaign.