A few kilometers from Chimay, in the city of Bellevue, we are two days away from the party of the neighbors
that will take place on Sunday in the city for the first time. In the community pavilion,
the preparations go well, trains and volunteers are mobilized. It is the result of nothing in a long
field work led by the AEMO Oxygen, with many partners in the community. It is the project
Quartier de Ville. It is a city that has a characteristic of isolated terraces in relation to the center of Chimay.
And so people sometimes have a lot of trouble at the level of mobility, to be able to get into the
different places where they can find services, leds, social leds in general. And we also notice
in this city there is still a concentration of people who are in financial situations,
family, sometimes difficult, prikary family, affected by unemployment, because we are still
in a region strongly affected by unemployment. And this city had a reputation at the level of
the Chimay entity. It was a bit the recluse here, people we did not want to be in the center.
And at first, it was actually volunteers who distributed food and that were confronted
with the stress of the families who intervened the AEMO Oxygen in order to intervene in the
Quartier. With three or two other friends, we see in passing through the city for different reasons,
for many families, we were overcome by the questions and the problems of the people living here.
And that's why we called Oxygen. All alone, we would not have suffered, we felt overcome,
we should have been capitulated, we were overcome by events. At that time, the AEMO didn't have the
means to develop a proximity work here. And then we thought, well, we have to do something,
we can't, we can't stay here. And we called all social, cultural, political interventions
that already intervene here in the region. It's true that we, I feel the concern was to say,
well, is that finally we don't make them only consumers. So we have the PCS, the social
collision plan, we have enough women's dreams, union traits, the AEMO, the ONF, etc. And so we
gathered for a year or two to think about what we could do concretely to improve the quality of
life of the people of the Quartier. Regularly, the partners and volunteers, members of this
platform, meet to make the point about the evolution of the project. In order to clarify the roles of
each one, a convention has been signed between all the partners and it is under the coordination of
the AEMO that all the actions are carried out. Finally, we learned to listen to the
silences, to listen to the silences, the silences of people who, by definition, do not ask for anything.
Because so much, they are in a situation at the limit of precarity, they no longer ask. And
maybe, indeed, we, the work we have already done so far, it is simply to listen, listen, create the
link. The problems facing families and the inhabitants of the village are multiple. The project
was, in any case, too heavy to bear for the AEMO itself. So to be able to be effective, we had to
use the local resources that could better respond to the difficulties and the needs of the
population. The network work is a bit the angular stone of the project. It is good for us, after
four years of operation, to stop and to evaluate the project in its entirety. The community pavilion,
implanted in the heart of the city, is a very concrete result of this work. It has been designed,
not as a house, the traditional neighborhood, but as a place of resources at the disposal of the
inhabitants. There are moments of relaxation, there is the slave workshop, there is the kitchen workshop. It is
moments that can be proposed to people, precisely, to take some time for them, to be able to
hang out a little, to rest a little, the isolation in which they also find themselves, it is important.
A whole series of associations offer activities or social permanences and a school of duty is also
organized twice a week. The neighborhood is evolving. Being a illustrator in the village, I already knew
a lot of people and we knew them very, very well with all these people. And we wanted,
precisely, the people who do not feel alone, because they are poor, but they are poor in everything,
ultimately. I think the most important thing is the time we spend with these children here. We
listen to them, we try to help them, we try to be as positive as possible. And this may be the
most important step. There is a whole work at the children's level. There is a whole work of
proximity that is done with parents. So if we take the work of proximity, the creation of the link,
the relationship of trust, well, when we go through the families, the parents can
precisely express themselves on the difficulties they face. I think that people at first were very
distrustful, so they had to, a little by the work of proximity of one and the other,
they had to establish the link, the link, so yes, there is an evolution. But hey,
we need time, we need a lot of time, because trust does not gain like that in a few months.
And the fact that we are organizing neighbors today, it is a little bit the result of a work
since four or five, when we would have done that for the first year, we would not have anyone.
