Halloween Cooking Workshop and Restructuring: The Vitality of the ACEDC Association

Spiders with whipped cream and almond paste, witches’ fingers to chew on, panna cottas with a disturbing eye made of kiwi slices… It was a Halloween cooking workshop on Monday October 30 at the O Soleil association café in Tulle. An event bringing together young tullists during these holidays, around its emblematic director Eric Lebreton, and which testifies to the vitality of the ACEDC association (Cultural and Educational Association for Citizen Development). It wants to be anything but a ghost association.

Making treats for Halloween.

While the children are in a good mood preparing the treats that will serve as their snack, administrators Philippe Pernet and Pierre Gautheron take stock of this popular education association, born in 1991, now undergoing restructuring.

Moving to Toussaint

Formalized by the town hall to leave its headquarters in Fageardie during the All Saints holidays in order to vacate the old school as part of its sale, ACEDC complied. “We moved 15 days ago. We emptied the premises and left them in good condition. Unfortunately, part of our stocks of popular education tools have gone to waste. The rest, notably the equipment for our photo workshop, was stored with individuals,” explains Philippe Pernet.

Eric Lebreton, director of the association and Heather, permanent, are helping out.

From now on, the association’s head office is located at the O Soleil associative café at 1 avenue Henri-de-Bournazel.

The association also has a room at the Turgot school for its homework help activity. Thirty-five children from first grade to second grade are already registered there for the school year. Primary school students are welcomed in Turgot while middle and high school students meet at the Café associatif. “As part of the energy savings launched by the City last year, which included not turning on the heating again at La Fageardie, we reorganized ourselves and stopped sending the children up there. We had already brought middle and high school students back to the café,” explains the director.

Looking for volunteers

ACEDC, which has been offering educational support for 32 years, is coping as best it can with the context, but remains determined to continue its mission. If the CAF did not renew its subsidy for homework help for this school year, “it is for a technical problem, indicates Eric Lebreton, but we have relaunched the file”. On the other hand, CAF still subsidizes ACEDC as a social life space for the associative café where workshops, cultural activities, games, meals during the week, concerts and theme evenings on Fridays are organized.

From four employees, the association has reduced its size to two and is now looking for volunteers, “all people of good will” for homework help which is offered free of charge.

Tulle: why the sale of the old Fageardie school to the Potentiels association does not come naturally
Financed by the CAF, the Department, the State, the municipality (€7,000 for two years) and by its own funds from memberships and the associative café, ACEDC, despite the economic difficulties, remains indeed active. Two employees, 131 members… “We play the game of transparency and we can justify the way we spend. Like any association, we are subject to moral and financial assessment,” insist the administrators in response to the attacks
. Approved as a Youth and Popular Education association, it intends to continue to create social bonds and help children “grow up”.

During the last Municipal Council, during a deliberation on the sale of the Fageardie school where ACEDC was housed, the opposition described it as a “ghost association”.