As every year, the Parisian municipality has launched a call for volunteers, to participate in the fifth Nuit de la Solidarité, which will take place on the evening of January 20 to 21, and thus help it to count the homeless present in the capital.
As a reminder, the Nuit de la Solidarité has been organized in Paris since 2018, in order to carry out the most accurate count possible of the number of homeless people.
During this evening, several hundred volunteers go to meet them and submit them a questionnaire (anonymous and not imposed), which should then make it possible to “identify their needs” and “to adapt public policies accordingly” towards them.
Great novelty this year, the Nuit de la Solidarité will be – “for the first time and on an experimental basis” – extended to the metropolitan scale, with the participation of ten municipalities of the Greater Paris Metropolis. Without knowing at this stage the conditions under which the accounts will be carried out in these new municipalities.
more than 2,000 volunteers expected
To carry out this fieldwork, more than 2,000 volunteers – accompanied by 400 professional team leaders – must carefully crisscross the streets of the capital and the neighboring participating towns. Together, they will be spread over more than 350 sectors in groups of 4/5 people supervised by a team leader, from 10 p.m.
To participate, all you need to do is register on the City of Paris website and be available all evening on Thursday, January 20. All volunteers are welcome – provided they are over 18 years old – knowing that this year, with the expansion of the area, registrations are “open to everyone, to Parisians as well as to all residents of Paris. Ile-de-France”.
Note that in 2019, the Nuit de la Solidarité had already been extended to a much larger area than during the first edition, thus making it possible to visit places particularly frequented by the homeless in the capital, such as the metro. , car parks, hospitals as well as in the woods of Vincennes (12th) and Boulogne (16th), thus allowing a better count of their number.
In five years, the number of homeless people has changed very little in Paris, fluctuating between more or less 200 people each year. In 2018, during the first edition, 3,418 people in street situations had been identified, then 3,641 in 2019 and 3,552 during the third edition in 2020, and finally, 2,829 people during the last edition of the Nuit de la Solidarité, organized from March 25 to 26.