I am one of those people won over by the letter from Jean-Pierre Picart and Jean Pingeon, which on 25 July 1994 suggested making a personal contribution to support people in difficulty.

Afterwards, I followed all work carried out to make a choice about our project:

  - Questionnaire at the Levallois site to target areas of involvement (with more than 75% on exclusion) as well as the number of volunteers (31%, which was a very good figure)

  - Interviews with local and national charities to narrow down our approach.

  - Definition of the project:

            * Use our skills: open a shop

              * Do not give freely, but help for a set amount of time and teach management skills

              * Make the shop a social place

              Make people come through food aid and "take advantage" of this to support them (school, work, languages, work experience, advice, sports, diet, etc).

              * Use waste positively.

  - And so we started out at a site in Levallois.

  - I personally took care of the shop side:

              * Seeking permissions

              * Training teams

              * Implementing management tools

              * Layout, pricing, organisation, etc.

  - I invested a great deal of time over the first five years to establish the concept and find solutions to the various problems we encountered with people who could sometimes be difficult. As always in this type of work, volunteers set off all gung ho, full of good intentions, but the reality can be cruel.

  - In 1999, I started to sponsor the Nord-Pas de Calais region (where I'm from) to open a third shop in Lens.

  - At the time, my job also changed and I joined an international department. This meant I was hardly ever in Levallois but I kept a lot of contact with the Northern region, especially Patrick Nanin.

  - For some time, wanting to create a national structure in France, I have been working harder, still on the shop side. I am currently responsible for formalising procedures to harmonise all of our shops.

  What this has done for me...

  - It is part of me. I have always "fought" in this kind of organisation, since I was in school (through chaplaincies, student groups, etc)

  - These human contacts, cultural exchanges and help for others are a real need for me, and I cannot imagine personal success without this.

  - However, all this has also taught me to stand back, protect myself against all this misery in which anything goes. It's a world that's very rewarding but it can be very hard too.

  - The example of the image we've acquired in the North has also convinced me that, above a certain level, humanitarian work needs to become more professional, and gain a degree of specialisation.

  - And keeping this bit until the end, it has also allowed me to make friends in a great project and at my level to draw benefit from the incredible amount of waste in our business.