Vaulx-En-Velin
Working in partnership with the “Maison des Familles” NGO
The Maison des Familles allows families in economic or relational vulnerability situations to create social relationships, foster solidarity between parents and restore their confidence in their educational abilities.
As part of the A House is A Home program, Somfy France and the Somfy Foundation are supporting the Maison des Familles in Vaulx en Velin, to build the kitchen, a central location in this house.
Vaulx-en-Velin a territory where parenting needs to be accompanied
Actions to support parenting must be able to adapt to the situations of precarious families. Precariousness is not only economic, but also social, relational and psychological. Distressed parents are no less competent than the others, but they do not have the means to fully exercise their role of parents. Too often, poor families are looked upon as resigning families.
At the Maison des Familles we consider parents as the first educators of their children. Nothing is easy when you live on a tight budget like families with the “Active Solidarity Income” RSA (a minimum income for unemployed and underemployed workers in France). But it is not because a family lives in precariousness that it must automatically lead to parental disqualification.
EMPOWERING FAMILIES IN VAULX-EN-VELIN
60
families
accompanied
100
welcomed
parents
The Maison des Familles promotes knowledge valorization of everyone. It fights against the addition of an educational disqualification to a possible social disqualification. The Maison des Familles aims to activate the competence of parents without ever having to decide for them, whatever their situation and context of life. The Maison des Familles is an area of prevention that is part of an empowerment approach: access to greater control over one's life, choices, actions, and environment.
Through new experiences and mutual help, parents must feel empowered to assert themselves as parents, they can project themselves back into an active social and professional life.
Our desire is to offer, from this safe place, support and actions to go to remote vulnerable populations, especially in the priority neighborhoods of the territory.
Fathers, mothers and children are welcomed in the Maison des Familles whatever their age: young parents with young children, single-parent families, isolated families, families of diverse cultural and social backgrounds.
Give priority to collective activities to promote expression, the ability to choose, the freedom to decide, the will to act and develop solidarity between people and between generations.
With the help of Somfy France and the Somfy Foundation, the non-profit organization in Vaulx-en-Velin was able to create a central room in the house: the kitchen. Cooking together means sharing knowledge between parents. Cooking and talking about food is to talk about oneself and one's country. This house is open 4 days a week, all day since March 2018.
The continuity of opening of the house allows collective actions and to reach a new public. In this house several activities will be proposed:
- Speaking groups on topics that are important to families (schooling, education, health ...)
- Meals prepared and shared together
- Coffee-reading,
- gardening, etc ...
It is not so much the activities themselves as the process initiated through these activities which are important, but the change in the way families look at their own abilities, their mutual enrichment. The activities will all be considered as a medium for exchange, initiative, sharing and mutual aid.
"The House in Vaulx-en-Velin has been open in march 2018. A day care is offered to families to support them in their parental function. The Maison des Familles also pays attention to isolation and fragility that can be a drag on parents' lives. With my team of Volunteers we want to erase these difficulties with meeting groups "discussion time, cooking meetups, coffee breaks, children gardening...". It is also the creation of a mutual support network between families and the opportunity to participate in the governance of the House... A place where we feel good, where we love to live."
Noémie Thiesson, Maison des Familles Manager
Maison des Familles manager