A close-up on volunteering in sport and beyond and on a status that some would like to see enhanced

Dimanche dernier, 1er décembre, Hélène assurait la circulation et les encouragements, bénévole d’un jour sur le Nature Marathon Man. – N.H.

Thursday, December 5th is World Volunteer Day. It's an opportunity to highlight a selfless act that could be more highly valued. And to recall some figures. An Ifop 2023 survey for Recherche & Solidarités estimates that 12.5 million people are involved in an association (23% of French people in 2010 to 25% in 2013 and 2016). The figure is 24% in 2024 as in 2019, with young people increasingly involved.

“It's something I've always done and loved doing. Getting involved, being part of the club's life rather than just on the side, acting, helping.”Lucien is one of the 24% of French people who devote their time to an association. His is a sports association. At 58, he remembers having coached, as a “teenager”, with the little ones before growing up in turn and taking on the roles of educator and manager. He has a few medals to prove it, but if only sometimes, it could be more…
This is a message that the treasurer of the Hérault Football District, Hervé Grammatico, is getting across. At each General Assembly – the next one, in winter, will take place this Saturday, December 7 in Pierresvives – he thanks these hundreds, thousands of volunteers while advocating a recognition that goes beyond medals and merit: a status.

If tomorrow the volunteers stopped working…

We can read on the site associations.gouv.fr the ambivalence of the subject: “The development of a status for volunteers has been the subject of various works and discussions with representatives of the associative world. It emerges from these that this project, in many aspects, clashes with the very nature of volunteering, which is a freely consented and free donation of time. The great diversity of forms that volunteering takes also makes it very difficult to define such a status.”
However, it is frequently put on the table. “It is a subject that interests me a lot because I have been immersed in it for a long time and I see the strength of volunteers explains Hervé Grammatico. The figure is 13 to 16 million, a quarter of the French, which means that it is something very powerful and if tomorrow, the volunteers stopped working, perhaps France would be paralyzed, perhaps more than at the SNCF! Under the pretext that we do this for pleasure, for passion, for conviction, we are recognized for nothing. And I am calling for a volunteer status.”

Many ways to value a volunteer

The key word is to value: “It could be retirement quarters, a volunteer card that, like a student card, would give discounts, a bonus of 200 to 300 euros, nothing resembling a salary, or one or two days of leave like for volunteer firefighters…, which would allow us to value an educator who takes a week of his time to lead a youth internship or go for training”.
And Hervé Grammatico gives this benchmark. “If I take on a third-year intern, I have the right to pay him €4.34 per hour without it being subject to contributions. Why not the volunteer. In some cases. It's true that he doesn't do it for the money but to supplement a pension, something declared, why not. For those who can. To volunteers who have been involved for years.”
While continuing on the impact of volunteers on employment: “9% of employees in France work in an association. So also thanks to volunteering. Which has an impact on economic and social life. I am convinced that we must value them to keep our volunteers. A framework, a real status, would facilitate this.”

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A rich experience to highlight

For example, a flat rate scale on travel expenses is illegal. “We can only give a cost per kilometer of €0.40. A volunteer who lives ten kilometers from a training course, I will give him €4 to spend the day organizing a plateau! So we could not reward everyone, but in some cases, it would not be scandalous!”
And then, adds the treasurer of the District who devotes several days of leave to this function, “I often tell an unemployed referee to highlight this activity which demonstrates involvement, seriousness, qualities such as being on time, respecting and enforcing rules”. An experience that enriches a CV if nothing else!

Chloé alongside the young shoots of HC Capestang.

« Sharing the values ​​of handball »

Having left for Montpellier for her studies where she is doing her third year of a degree in Staps (sports management), Chloé Milesi returns to Capestang almost every weekend to help her childhood club. Coach of the U9 mixed, this is her third year coaching these children. During her first year in Staps, she had to do an internship in a handball club, her specialty sport. So she started as part of her studies and never stopped: “Before my internship, I participated in the club's associative life but not as a coach”.
Chloé knows the club where she started as a player by heart: “I started in under nine and finished in under eighteen at Capestang. Since there is no team for my category, I play in Narbonne now”. &After her first year coaching as part of her internship, she didn't see herself stopping, "I didn't want to let go of all the staff who are short of volunteers, it's a small club, the young people in the club need us”.

A family involved

As a young volunteer, she wants to pass on her passion for handball, her goal is to “share the values ​​of handball with the little ones and teach them the basics, make them want to play a sport”. A passion for handball that has been transmitted by his father, Christophe. "It is thanks to him that I play handball, he transmitted to me the values ​​of sport, but also the fact of helping others as a volunteer."
A father and a family involved in this sports association. "He was president, my big brother was vice-secretary and my aunt was secretary.”
In her own way, Chloe helps keep the Capestang Handball Club alive and sees herself continuing to coach here. “Yes, I want to continue to help them as a coach but I don't see myself in the office, there are already people who take very good care of it”.
Tom Galpin

 

Volunteers in search of meaning

An Ifop 2023 Research & Solidarités survey, which measures changes in the volunteer engagement rate every three years since 2010, confirms a certain increase in the engagement of the French after the difficult Covid period. « The rate of voluntary association engagement goes from 24% in 2019 to 20% in 2022, from 13 million in 2019 to 11 in 2022 » wrote the survey two years ago. This year 2024, the figures published go back to the height of 2019. With an increase in investment by the youngest, particularly in occasional forms, from +20% in 2010 to 31% in 2022. The fact also that “one-off volunteering continues to grow, now accounting for almost a third of association volunteers”. During the pandemic, 4 million volunteers stopped their activity, one million did not resume. More than a million new volunteers or new missions have also been identified due to the need for solidarity.

Hérault Sport Volunteer Space

Several platforms offer to connect associations and volunteers to unpaid missions.
France Bénévolat connects associations and volunteers at the national level (https://www.francebenevolat.org/associations).
But also the site “jeveuxaider.gouv.fr” (by the civic reserve), a public volunteer platform that allows you to create a link, find or publish a mission.
A link, an information and support network, taken up at the local level through a tool launched by Hérault Sport via its website: a volunteer space aimed at organizers of sporting events in Hérault, who can register their event and detail their needs. And for volunteers who want to occupy their free time, looking for missions.
https://sport.herault.fr/1318-espace-benevolat.htm

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