In Alsace, workshops to help RSA recipients “recreate social ties”

The heads are low and the looks shy. Years of precariousness, isolation, even desocialization end up making people cautious, even suspicious. For the beneficiaries of the active solidarity income (RSA), talking about oneself is a test. Difficult to express yourself when your voice seems, most of the time, inaudible. Julie, Cyril and Sandra – they wished to remain anonymous – are among them.

All three are part of the 305 Alsatians at the RSA registered in a voluntary volunteer program launched by the European Community of Alsace (CEA, resulting from the merger of the departments of Haut-Rhin and Bas-Rhin), which they follow at the ‘Atelier, one of the four structures funded by the community to carry out this mission. A device that allows “to recreate social ties, to feel useful”, assures Julie, 36 years old. Holder of a degree in psychology, at the RSA since 2015, she is now in contact with the Caritas association to carry out a socially oriented professional project. “It was this journey that allowed me to know that I really wanted to do this”she says.

Sandra, 40, found a job in July in an Ehpad, thanks to the Workshop, in the premises of this association, on November 18, 2022, in Sélestat (Bas-Rhin).
Lorna Piasentin, RSA referent for support for the citizen engagement system, and Myriam Haddouf (right), deputy director of the Workshop, on November 18, 2022, at the association's premises, in Sélestat (Bas-Rhin).

Alsace, a territory that is useful to observe with regard to the reform of the RSA promised by Emmanuel Macron. During his campaign for his re-election, in the spring, the President of the Republic had announced that he wanted to condition the payment of the allowance to between fifteen and twenty hours of weekly activities. The Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt, announced on Tuesday, December 13, the list of nineteen territories selected to experiment with this new support system in 2023, as part of the creation of France Travail, the future public service of the ‘use.

Mixed success

The two Alsatian departments did not wait for the government project to try to combine RSA and volunteering. In 2016, the Haut-Rhin wanted to make compulsory an associative commitment of seven hours per week. A measure first challenged by the administrative court at the end of 2016 before being finally validated by the Council of State in 2018. But since the merger of the two departments in 2021, the CEA prefers to bet on volunteering, in particular through these “citizen engagement workshops”. Recipients take part in group meetings twice a month, a first step before eventually moving on to volunteering in an association. “The beginning of a recovery of self-confidence”explains Lorna Piasentin, RSA referent at the Atelier.

For the president (Les Républicains) of the ECA, Frédéric Bierry, “volunteering is the key”. The device aims, according to him, “people particularly far from employment” for which “associative life allows you to recreate a network, to regain confidence by showing yourself and others that you can keep a commitment and achieve something”. However, the impact seems quite relative. With 305 people supported, it concerns only 1% of the 39,000 RSA recipients in Alsace.

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