Patronage: TotalEnergies supports the Habitat&Humanisme association in Pau
- The aim of the association Habitat&Humanisme is to fight against the exclusion and isolation of vulnerable people.
- In Pau, the Pyrénées Adour branch has welcomed and housed Ukrainian refugees since the beginning of the war.
- TotalEnergies and its volunteer employees have shown solidarity to meet the needs of the association.
Habitat&Humanisme has been taking action for more than 35 years to help with housing, inclusion and the creation of social bonds. The association, which is present in three departments – the Landes, the Hautes-Pyrénées and the Pyrénées Atlantiques – considers that access to housing is the key principle of inclusion and has taken over the former Sainte-Odile convalescence home in Billère. Through its Corporate Foundation, TotalEnergies contributed to restoring and reopening the site, which underwent rapid refurbishment between March and April 2022 to welcome the refugees, essentially women and children fleeing Ukraine. In late 2022, 124 were welcomed and received help in performing administrative procedures.
Voluntary solidarity
Habitat&Humanisme is run mainly by volunteers all over France. Following the financial support received, the association naturally turned to the CSTJF teams to propose volunteering initiatives.
Thanks to the Action! solidarity commitment program, TotalEnergies employees may devote up to three working days a year to public interest initiatives. Some of them used the time to teach French to the Ukrainian refugees or to help the families tackle the many administrative procedures they had to complete on arrival, for example.
In addition to these different individual initiatives, the bonds between TotalEnergies and Habitat&Humanisme were further strengthened through the organization of a solidarity team-building session on November 17 in Pau. A whole team of employees came to lend a helping hand to the association’s volunteers at the Résidence Lamothe, by moving the contents of an entire apartment and installing five new cookers for the residents. "This type of operation creates cohesion by sharing key moments with colleagues during activities with a positive impact. It's helping by doing," explains one of the participants. "Discussions with the beneficiaries are one of the prerequisites of group volunteering initiatives, and it was really nice that the morning ended by having lunch with the inhabitants. A really useful initiative, and it's very satisfying to be able to see the effects straightaway!" he concludes.