Sophie Chabaud (EDHEC Master 1989): “There is something profoundly good in each of us”

Communication agencies, sports events, automotive industry, telecoms … all of the sectors Sophie Chabaud (EDHEC Master 1989) has worked in require communication skills. In 2011 she joined the Fondation Apprentis d’Auteuil, where she now serves as deputy Director of Communication, Benefactor Relations and Resources. In particular, she contributes to the development of the foundation’s notoriety and the way this busy and dynamic structure defines its messages. It represents 300 different establishments and programmes and caters for 30,000 youths facing social, educational or family problems. On the inside, what makes a foundation that has been around for more than 150 years tick? What drives its staff members? Read on as Sophie answers these questions with her characteristic passion.

How would you summarise your current position and responsibilities?

I play a dual role: communication first, with the aim of enhancing the Foundation’s reputation, developing its notoriety and its image; and I am also deputy director of all activities relating to collecting (patronage, marketing, philanthropy, gifts), which represent 42% of our resources.

What is the common thread from the world of communication that you were able to reuse throughout your various experiences before this one? 

In terms of job-specific skills, there is a strong common thread indeed. I wouldn’t say we copy and paste, but you do often use the same reflexes and face the same kinds of challenges and questions regardless of the sector. I work a lot on content strategies: that’s where you find the biggest gap and a considerable need for immersion and learning. For example, when moving from product strategy at Renault (in industry) to child protection, training or rehabilitation, there is no common ground.

Who does the Apprentis d’Auteuil Foundation reach out to?

We have multiple target audiences. Reaching out to the general public allows us to raise awareness of the foundation and the specifics of what it does. We also need to update the public’s knowledge of the foundation, as for some people it conjures up the image of orphanages, which was its initial mission. Our campaigns target those willing to become supporters, and perhaps someday donors. But a recent challenge is including potential staff, which implies a significant employer brand dimension: we recruit a lot and need to be attractive in terms of social sector jobs, which are undervalued and often involve challenging working conditions.

We also aim to raise awareness and change people’s views of the youths and families we support. This is what we call “advocacy”, the equivalent of lobbying in the private sector, except it is in the public interest, whereas lobbying defends private interests: it involves bringing about shifts in public policies to make them more favourable to the people we support. Here, the institutional and political dimensions are key. 

Internal communication is also essential for cohesion between our 6,000 staff members (on top of which we have 3,000 volunteers), most of whom are educators, teachers, night attendants, psychologists, etc. 

Finally, we reach out to young people and their parents, particularly from our secondary schools, vocational colleges and rehabilitation programmes. In this category, we increasingly target NEETs (youths aged 15 to 29 who are “neither in employment nor in education or training”), sometimes called “the invisible”. As this suggests, they are not easy to find! It’s a real challenge letting them know we exist and that we can provide a solution to these young people, who don’t fall under the traditional categories. 

In your communication, how can you be sincere without playing too much on people’s sensibilities? 

That is indeed a balancing act I’m all too aware of. In this type of organization, there can be a gulf between direct marketing, which aims to encourage people to act, and messages designed to convey realities. This is why we merged our communication and resources departments a few years ago, supporting our teams to achieve better collaboration and for greater consistency in our messages and communication. We want to reflect life in our establishments with as much authenticity as possible. And so communication relies heavily on testimonials and the views expressed by youths and staff. We have managed to develop a form of marketing that is less of a “tearjerker”. Our communication is deliberately based on the positive values of Catholicism and hope. 

How do you balance the foundation’s Catholic identity with the fact that it is open to all?  

We are a Catholic foundation, awarded public utility status in 1929. We serve the public interest while at the same time drawing on our identity and core values taken from the Gospel. For some people, that continuity is quite reassuring as it is seen as an element of stability since the foundation was first set up more than 150 years ago. Its mission remains unchanged – to accompany young people who, at some point in their life, face difficulties and to help them become “upstanding men and women” – yet has been adapted over the centuries. This can come into play when dealing with donors, depending on their beliefs or lack thereof, but everyone is free to see these humanist values as they wish. Naturally, we welcome young people from all faiths, either from France or elsewhere, as well as unaccompanied minors. Certain Muslims are reassured to be in an environment with religious beliefs, albeit not their own. Intercultural and inter-religious sharing is very important to us. At a convention for the foundation’s directors at the start of the year, we invited the Chief Rabbi of France, the Archbishop of Marseille and the Rector of the Paris Mosque. Such moments of mutual understanding are central and encourage openness towards one another. Whether one is a believer or not, faith in mankind is the foundation of our approach. We are convinced that there is something profoundly good in each of us, although sometimes what people go through make it harder (but not impossible) to find. For children who have been damaged, regaining their confidence is in itself a huge achievement.

How do you impact public policies? 

Here, too, you have to begin by “spreading the word”, with testimonials and immersion. Changing people’s perspectives is one of the objectives underpinning our communication campaign. We invite political leaders to visit our children’s homes, schools and family shelters, and they are often very moved and have a better understanding of the realities facing young people and the challenges involved. We have a team dedicated to advocacy: together with staff on the ground, they identify what needs to be changed in the law to make it more favourable for youths and thereby combat the dysfunctions that affect the lives of the children we support. It’s like the work of a lobbyist, but for the common good. It’s a daily battle, but the presidential and parliamentary elections are especially important moments in our work. For example, as we head towards the 2022 elections, we are preparing a major mobilisation campaign to get the general public “behind young people”! Underpinning the campaign is a short book that draws on the words of thousands of young people and staff members to whom we reached out. We defend our convictions based on what they have to say, their ideas and the solutions we experiment with on the ground. The aim here is to formulate concrete proposals to effect change! And to share these proposals with campaign staff, politicians as well as the general public. 

How does the Apprentis d’Auteuil Foundation choose which projects to support? 

When it comes to rehabilitation, there are many different scenarios. We may identify needs for which there are not yet any solutions. And so we set about building a solution, either alone or with partners, and look for financing to see the project through. You might call it social engineering. The advantage of our funding system, based on both public (58%) and private (42%) funds, is that we act in a way that is complementary to public policy and so we can finance the innovation side with private funds; and if it works, we can develop the programmes and roll them out elsewhere.

We also sometimes respond to calls for projects. There have been a certain number of them under Emmanuel Macron’s presidency, particularly in relation to rehabilitation, with state investment plans to develop skills. Calls for projects may relate to a general theme nationwide (including overseas territories) in areas where young people are suffering, or in specific regions. We then propose to develop schemes that are tried and tested or to create new ones. The State generally funds a large percentage (around 80%); it is then up to us to find the remaining 20% through patronage or philanthropy. Beyond the impact of our work, which we feel it is important to measure, we also experiment with approaches that we then share so they can be pooled with other actors. For example, in our work on rehabilitation, we used design thinking to “source” young people and then shared that experience after 18 months of work. 

“It’s tough being 20 in 2020”. What is your view of the situation facing young people in 2021?  

The lockdowns were more challenging for youths facing difficulties, because they are further removed from school, don’t necessarily have a computer at home and need more hands-on support. However, I would say that they were a way to bring young people to the forefront; there has been a lot of talk about mental health in particular. That was a necessity, faced with the increasing need for psychological support, for example among children that have been placed in homes (but not only), who sometimes struggle to find support for financial reasons or because there is a lack of child psychiatrists. Violence is also a subject that has been exacerbated in recent years, and is something we are hearing a lot about on the ground: institutional violence, intra-family violence, prostitution of young girls. We campaign for the rights of the child, whether on the other side of the world or here in France, where rights are not always respected either, and sometimes the children themselves are even unaware of them.

What are the consequences of the isolation caused by Covid? 

With lockdowns, the risk is that young people are more likely to turn inwards, with social media having more of a “closing” than an “opening” effect, especially among teenagers who are already vulnerable. At Apprentis d’Auteuil, we believe strongly in the power of encounters. When our “elders” tell us about their lives, they often name someone who made them feel loved and understood and allowed them to progress. In 2020, we tried to maintain links as best we could. Some children housed – or placed – as part of child protection measures were isolated from their families for 2 or 3 months, but despite everything, some of them had wonderful experiences with educators who, because of the exceptional circumstances, lived with them for 4 or 5 days. Surprisingly, their links with their families were in some cases reconstructed thanks to that distance. For example, one mother who longer spoke to her children was able to talk to them on the phone, and they said things to one another that they never had before.

Has Covid brought about a rise in donations? 

One study on the generosity of French people published recently does indeed show that donations rose in 2020, as did the number of donors, whereas those figures had been stagnating or even declining in previous years. It’s a signal of solidarity displayed by all. That rise in declared donations is above all driven by those made to people in difficulty, known in France as “Coluche” donations. It was of course associations who stepped up in response to the urgent situations resulting from the lockdowns and raised the most money. But protecting children remains one of the most popular causes in France, and the needs are constant. The end of the year is a key period for collecting, but we have faith in the generosity of our donors!

How would you define the foundation’s inherent sense of tolerance? 

“Tolerance” is a catch-all phrase, one never quite knows what is intended by it. I would say it is about learning not to judge, to accept others and their differences, as they are, not to label people: not just a “pupil”, “dropout” or “migrant”. And that’s something that must be learned, lived and experienced. Civic education is one of the foundation’s approaches. As is openness towards others. We try to make sure our youths live through different, intercultural experiences. Particularly through our international solidarity workshops: young people head off for 2 or 3 weeks to a foreign country, for example to restore a building with one of our local partners. They meet young people from other cultures and religions, discover other ways of life and often come back transformed. Father Brottier, one of the foundation’s figureheads, used to say he wanted to help young people become “upstanding men and women”. We have yet to find a better expression. The aim is to enable them to regain their self-confidence and find fulfilment in society, not only through work, but as human beings. To live alongside others, if possible in harmony. Tolerance refers to all of these things.