Frédérique LECOMTE
Director
ONF Fund - Agir pour la forêt
What can you tell us about your fund?
The ONF endowment fund Agir pour la forêt is an extension of the sponsorship process initiated with companies by the French National Forests Office about thirty years ago. The fund enables everyone - companies, foundations and members of the public - to donate for the forest and, in doing so, contribute to its conservation. The current context is particularly complex owing to climate change and the loss of biodiversity.
What’s your commitment to youth?
Understanding the forest is a first step toward respecting and taking care of it better. Educating younger generations helps create future adults who know just how fragile these environments are and are fully aware of their responsibility to protect them. The fund finances three types of projects. First, receiving school-goers on educational sites, particularly in the Île de France region where the public is far removed from nature. Secondly, involving young adults in the deployment of projects thanks to the work/study and inclusion system. And finally, making it easier for everyone to access the forest, in particular the disabled.
What’s your project with TotalEnergies Foundation?
TotalEnergies Foundation’s commitment to working with us concerns coastal forests in France and in the overseas departments. They are particularly complex, fragile environments, and the challenges of climate change and the excessive number of visitors. Our partnership focuses on three main aspects: preserving and restoring the forest environments, protecting biodiversity and finally, a more educational aspect which involves raising the awareness of the general public and young people to the fragile nature of these environments and the need to preserve them. One example is the project at the Blanchet Sylvathèque in Gourbeyre, Guadeloupe which totally restored the duckboard access routes. Young trainees doing their adapted military service (SMA) in Guadeloupe made a huge contribution to this work.
Can you sum up “Creating partnerships” in a few words?
“Creating partnerships” is about providing a collective solution by uniting all the energies, bringing together the different stakeholders and helping to obtain public-private funding, as we did after the major forest fires in summer 2022, to help restore the vast areas of fire-ravaged forests on the Aquitaine coast. “Creating partnerships” is also sharing, working while listening to others and being open-minded so that we can grow and move forward together on key issues.
