“My mother got a raise in her salary to pay for groceries, which are super expensive in Mayotte. You know, in the overseas departments, cheese costs 10 euros. And so the fact that my parents have more money, they take it out of my purse”, was indignant Maëlle on TikTok, in a video published on November 1. In a video that went viral in a few days, the student at Sciences Po, in tears, worries that she can no longer live with only 100€ of scholarship. “It exploded because a lot of people were affected by it, but not just because I’m crying, but because in fact, it’s them, what. It’s them now, it was them 10 years ago, or it’s them a year from now. Or it’s parents who are worried about their kids or can’t pay for their kids’ education and are sorry, so their kids have to work.”, explains Maëlle.
“I have so many people who wrote to me under my video: ‘Well, I was in the same situation as you, I stopped my studies, what. I was interested, but I had to stop because I couldn’t pay.’ And we are in France, a country where, normally, we advocate that everyone can educate themselves, that it is possible, but it is not true. And above all, I want the debate on student income to be in the public square, that we talk about it, that we do something, that we get moving, that we inform everyone”, she thinks.
A kitty has been opened online to help the young woman. No less than 14,000 euros were collected. “There are a lot of people who contacted me, who said to me: ‘I don’t have any money, I can’t…’ And suddenly, I wanted to help them, but you can’t. helping people one by one, because, I think, just looking at there, I have over a hundred requests, so suddenly I thought it through and decided to give some of the kitty to associations that help students in precarious situations, because I thought that was the fairest way to redistribute. I’m going to keep part of it, I’m going to keep enough all the same to be able to live and take advantage of these pennies that they gave me so that I could have a base and not have to worry. But afterwards, I don’t need to keep everything because I’m going to work, and it’s going to be fine.”