A first lady replaces another. Brigitte Macron succeeded Bernadette Chirac at the Hôpital de Paris-Hôpitaux de France foundation and launched her first collection of donations for the Yellow Pieces on Wednesday 8 January. It thus takes over the reins of an epic born in 1989. An operation which, in thirty years, has raised more than € 98 million for hospitalized children.
At the origin of the Yellow Pieces, a professor of medicine and a journalist specializing in health topics. Claude Griscelli and Anne Barrère want to improve the reception of sick children and their parents. They launch a small piggy bank, which they display in shops and hospitals, and get the equivalent of € 14,000. A first project is born and a playroom is inaugurated within the Necker hospital in Paris.
But the real success of the Yellow Pieces coincides with the arrival of Bernadette Chirac as its director. Mother of a sick young girl, she became attached to the cause, and did not leave the presidency of the foundation until twenty-five years later. Under his presidency, donations will increase until the record peak in 2002, when the funds raised reach fifteen million euros.