Emmaüs Solidarité gets €40,000 grant to continue homelessness rehabilitation work in Paris’ 10th arrondissement
By Lizete Dos Santos
Paris, October 7 — Emmaüs Solidarité, a charitable association in Paris, received a €40,000 grant to continue their work rehabilitating homeless people through a shared garden project in Square Saint-Laurent in Paris’ 10th arrondissement.
The charity received the grant during the budgetary allocation of the 10th arrondissement’s town hall meeting on Monday, September 21. Emmaüs is one of the six partner organisations that works alongside the Mairie of the 10th arrondissement as part of the jardins solidaires (solidarity gardens) project. The project aims to promote inclusivity of the homeless by building links with local residents through gardening and creative workshops.
The recent grant will allow Emmaüs to continue their work for another year, however these resources will now be spread across three solidarity gardens instead of just two. These resources are part of a recurring partnership between the Mairie of the 10th arrondissement and Emmaüs, comprising nearly a third of the Mairie’s €135,500 grant fund total.
The money will mainly go towards salaries for garden supervisors and reintegration schemes for dozens of homeless participants. As part of the ‘First Hours’ scheme, homeless can earn money by working in the garden for a few hours a week.
“It is a way to help the most fragile people in the community relearn basic skills such as arriving on time and completing projects by providing a healthy routine,” said Luisa Landa, a Project Manager for Emmaüs who oversees the garden projects among others. “The garden is a place for the homeless to regain self-esteem.”
The 1456m2 garden, which is a short walk from the Gare de l’Est train station, used to be an unsafe space with illegal squatting and drug use. Since the inception of the solidarity garden project in 2016, it has gained a new identity. The space is now also used for concerts and art workshops during the summer.
“Before no one used to walk through that area, but now so many people are using the space to bring their families, eat lunch and enjoy the park,” said Suleman Niakate, who works in a business across the street from Square Saint-Laurent.
The garden is surprisingly tranquil given its location next to the busy Boulevard de Magenta. Its eclectic colours and design pay homage to the participants and volunteers’ vision. In the middle of the garden, the Emmaüs shed houses all the tools and supplies for the gardening projects and workshops as well as a small outdoor library for book sharing.
The Maraude Paris Nord branch of Emmaüs is in charge of running the garden workshops which take place weekly, on Mondays and Thursdays in Square Saint-Laurent. Participants and volunteers enjoy a coffee together before cleaning, watering and planting seeds. On a cloudy Thursday morning, one of the project coordinators, Emanuela Graziosi, visits the park to check in with the team of volunteers who are getting some tools out of the shed for another gardening project nearby. Emanuela is dressed in a red and black rain jacket, jeans and sneakers with her hair in a low bun.
“Something that is really important to us here is that everyone is on the same level, no one is more important than anyone else, we all have the same right to work in and enjoy the garden,” Graziosi explains. She also added that the new grant is a valuable resource, but that the team of volunteers is a just as important part of the work they do.
Square Saint-Laurent will also be closed for the following six weeks because of construction work to the adjacent church, suspending the garden project during that time. However, before then the team has prepared the garden for winter by starting to plant mainly bulbs. There was a lot of work to catch up on given the lost time over the spring due to COVID-19 lockdown measures.
The Emmaüs team explained that some of the local residents have also started bringing food waste to add to the garden’s compost pile, which is a positive sign of community buy-in. Closing the social gap between the most vulnerable and local residents is an important aspect of the garden workshops.
“A year ago, we had no local resident volunteers here with us but now we have a few people which has really made me happy,” said Graziosi. “It is complicated to explain to people that homelessness is not just related to drug and alcohol abuse, it could happen to any of us who fall on hard times,” she said.
The team says they are doing more than just gardening. Square Saint-Laurent is simply a context for the larger social work that needs to be done to address inequalities in the city.
