Tuesday noon. Heavy rain is falling on the Cormontaigne campus. In front of the door of the IUT, a small group of students hurry to unload the cargo of the day for which they are intended. In the boxes, we find toilet paper, razors, toothbrushes and toothpaste, feminine protections … Hygiene products all that are more ordinary, and yet: in recent months, the crisis Sanitary revealed to what extent the constitution of a toiletry bag, even basic, could strain small budgets. “The general public does not realize it, but, yes, indeed, many people ignore hygiene products for lack of money”, confirm Megane Albrecht-Delgado and Gaëlle Courson-Proville. The two young women, who created Atelier 17.91, are the benefactors of the day, and it is no coincidence that they have targeted the student community.
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“For a year, there has been a lot of media coverage of student insecurity in large cities, but it is present everywhere. Usually, we work in the shadows, in connection with charities, with audiences who are not necessarily talked about, but who simply do not have the budget to wash properly. For Thionville, we were alerted by the CCAS, which raised points of difficulty, ”says Gaëlle.
The student office, which centralizes the reception of products, will redistribute them to the most precarious young people, on campus but also elsewhere in Thionville.
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300,000 products offered in eight months
Created last fall, Atelier 17.91 (a reference to the year when the Declaration of Human Rights also included those of women) is an association that operates throughout the department. It focuses its action on the collection and redistribution of hygiene products and the animation of itinerant inclusive beauty workshops. The covid crisis immediately gave a boost to these altruistic and essential actions. The relevance is there: Megane and Gaëlle managed to obtain a budget of 15,000 € from the Crédit Agricole foundation. The money is fully reinvested in the purchase of toiletries. In eight months of action, they have sold nearly 300,000 articles free of charge. Vertiginous.
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