A strange place for a presentation of the Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC) school in Paris. On the first floor of the vast headquarters of the South Winners, the largest group of Olympique de Marseille (OM) supporters in the popular district of Belle-de-Mai (3e district), Julie Thinès opens her eyes amazed. Director of Academic Affairs and Tuition at HEC Paris, she acknowledges that she is not “totally aware of football”. Rachid Zeroual, the leader of this group of 7,800 members, and Hamza Baggour, one of its main figures, have just presented their stronghold to him. And she now faces the interested questions of about fifteen young people from Marseille, seated in a circle around her.
“The idea stuck to what our school seeks to do in the field of inclusion”, underlines Julie Thinès
For the past year, these high school students, from very different social backgrounds and neighborhoods, have been taking part in the astonishing experience of the Protis Club, an association which prepares them to join preparatory classes after their baccalaureate and which, in the long term, aims to to open up a path for them to the Grandes Ecoles. Jules Sitruk is at the heart of this project born in April 2022. Smiling and warm, efficient patter, this 24-year-old HEC student convinced the leaders of his school, and more particularly the “equal opportunities” mission, to grant him a gap year in the middle of his two-year master’s degree. ” This is a very rare derogation, but the idea stuck to what our school seeks to do in the field of inclusion. We want to change things in five to ten years, by recruiting students who can set foot in different worlds. Jules arrived at the right time “, emphasizes Julie Thinès.
Subscriber to the South Winners, in love with his city, the Marseillais imagined, with Rachid Zeroual, a project in an astonishing format. Not a cramming stable picking the best students and putting them to work; not an association exclusively reserved for high school students from difficult neighborhoods… but “rather a springboard that opens the field of possibilities to young people from all the districts of Marseille, with half work and half living together. A club where they mingle and become friends, while developing their ambition and their requirements.defines the person concerned, who simultaneously plays the role of organizer, coach and big brother.
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