On June 25, the charity founded by Coluche organizes its first festival and invites to “a day of exchange and sharing” throughout the country. Objective: to reach new potential beneficiaries, but also to recruit volunteers.
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The Restos du Coeur are organizing their first festival on June 25, with dances hosted by DJs and open house operations in the association’s premises across the country. The event is intended to reach new potential beneficiaries but also to recruit volunteers, they announced on Tuesday, May 2.
“We’ll give you a date for a day of discussion and sharing”, said in a press release the charity, paraphrasing the words of Coluche in the song of the Enfoirés, signed Jean-Jacques Goldman. Places of food distribution or job search assistance, accommodation centers for the homeless: everywhere in France, hundreds of places managed by the Restos will be open to everyone, Patrice Douret told AFP, President of the association.
“We have the terrible image of endless queues in front of distribution points, but we want to show that restaurants are also places where we can talk and smile”, added Patrice Douret. The challenge is both to get in touch with precarious people who would hesitate to push the door of “Restaurants” to ask for help but also with potential new volunteers, he detailed. Some 70,000 permanent volunteers and just over 23,000 occasional workers distribute around 142 million meals a year and help 1.2 million people, according to figures provided by Restos.
On the evening of June 25, the festival, which could become recurrent like the Enfoirés concerts, will conclude with around twenty balls hosted by DJs like Agoria or Étienne de Crécy. The ticketing receipts (12 euros for adults) will be used to finance the action of the Restaurants and the beneficiaries will be able to obtain free tickets.
Last January, the association suffered a shortfall of 4 million euros after having had to reimburse the entrance tickets to the Enfoirés shows – due to the pandemic, the 2022 concert was recorded without an audience -, and this financial unforeseen was not compensated by the public authorities, according to Patrice Douret.