Marie-Flore Leclercq
Managing Director, Entourage
Carton: What can you tell us about your association?
Entourage is an association that aims to involve everyone, in creating social bonds with people who suffer insecurity or are isolated.
Citizenship dynamics is our DNA.
The question is: “What can each of us do to help these people regain self-confidence, have confidence in others, and confidence in life?”
And conversely, help us to realize what that will change for us in our relations with others.
Carton: What’s your commitment to youth?
At Entourage, we reach out to anyone who suffers insecurity or is isolated - that’s 2.5 million people.
They are of all ages, but many of them are young and should be starting out in life? But they can’t quite manage it, because they do not have access to the right networks to open the right doors for them, particularly in the professional sector.
So here at Entourage, we mobilize an entire group of people to focus on a young person’s career plans.
And that’s where the support from TotalEnergies corporate Foundation comes in.
Obviously, a young person is supported by several people and each of these people can support several young people.
And that’s how we manage to weave a real fabric, a true network.
Carton: Can you sum up “creating partnerships” in a few words?
What’s interesting is that it’s a partnership which is fairly open.
There’s room for innovation, and it’s both a long-term partnership with a partner who also understands that things can change and develop.
I’d think that for the Company quite a few things must have changed in three years, and the same is true for an association.
It’s very important for us to have financial backers over several years, who enable us to look forward, plan ahead, and enable us to commit to structuring work packages.
And who, at the same time, give us latitude to evolve perhaps relative to the project that we discussed initially.
I consider that it goes that bit further than a simple partnership on paper, whereby we know of one another but don’t know each other.
It’s really about trying to understand each other, understand the challenges involved, and also understand what we can contribute over and above what was agreed in the initial ‘deal’.
That’s really the idea behind all this for us, the Action! program for example, by TE employees volunteering their skills and expertise which means that this partnership can support the association in other ways.
