In Moselle, nearly 2,000 children are entrusted to Child Welfare, including 323 unaccompanied minors. To help them, France Parrainages is looking for families. The aim of the association: to break isolation and facilitate social integration.
Its N°1 – France Parrainages Moselle is looking for volunteers to ”offer a break of happiness” to children
Sabine Kieffer – coordinator of the Moselle branch of France Parrainages
How does sponsorship actually work?
Proximity sponsorship involves volunteers who provide emotional and educational support by creating a special and lasting bond with vulnerable children who live near them. The commitment for volunteers is to spend time, approximately every 3 or 4 weeks, initially on daytime and then on accommodation if things go well, even during vacations, once the relationship is established. established.
How many children have you already helped?
Currently we have around fifty supported sponsorships and we have at least 30 children waiting for sponsorship and we receive new requests regularly. There are a lot of children who could benefit from this device.
What do these sponsorships bring to the child?
Most of the children who are sponsored live in the community so they are placed in child welfare. We call it a little parenthesis of happiness. It gives them the fact of having an adult other than someone from their family on whom they will be able to rely throughout their life.
Are there any examples of journeys, great stories to share following sponsorship in Moselle?
We don’t have much perspective since the Moselle branch only opened in November 2020, but we still have sponsorships that are at least 3 years old. These are children who had lived in a community for many years, who rarely left the establishment and this allowed them to discover what daily life was like. Simple things in life. Making meals with their godfather/godmother, some spent Christmas outside of a community for the first time. These are still cool things that can be offered to children.
In Moselle there are relatively precarious families and many children in care, is there a greater need in our territory?
We have 90% of sponsored children who are placed, so it’s still a large majority. We have a lot of requests from children who could benefit from this system, so that’s why we are looking for godparents throughout the Moselle region because we operate throughout the Moselle.
What are the criteria for becoming a sponsor?
You must be at least 18 years old. They can be single people, students aged 18 and over, working people, retirees, couples with or without children. The common denominator is that they have the desire to share time with a child and to travel a long way with them.
What steps should you take if you are interested?
There is a whole recruitment process. You must contact us via the website to schedule an information meeting, this is a meeting that we often do by videoconference to reach as many people as possible in which we explain how local sponsorship works. What does it consist of, what is the commitment etc.? Then we send a file which they must return to us completed with supporting documents. Once the file is completed, we do at least two recruitment interviews. We are two social workers in Moselle, so one does the first interview, the other does the second. Afterwards we pass the applications to the validation committee and if everything is ok, the volunteers become godparents with us.
