Do you love animals?
Why not become a mediator in a care center dedicated to wildlife as part of a mission lasting several months in Champagne?
Do you prefer to restore a pond and eliminate invasive plants as part of a nature project?
Apply to Amiens (Picardie), where volunteers are being sought for an eight-month internship.
You only need to surf the government site dedicated to civic service to come across dozens of announcements relating to environmental projects.
But by the end of the five-year term, the Prime Minister wants these “green” missions to become more widespread.
Believing that the success of the ecological transition is “the challenge of our generation”, Gabriel Attal wants to create an “ecological civic service” which will bring together 50,000 young people wishing to “make a concrete commitment to the climate in 2027”.
🎯Caping 50,000 young people in ecological Civic Service 🌿@GabrielAttal@politiqueFR@Ecologie_Gouv#Attal #DirectAN #ServiceCivique #écologie pic.twitter.com/gMOsiINprs
— Civic Service (@ServiceCivique) January 30, 2024
Volunteers on an ecological civic service mission “often go to meet residents and tourists in their neighborhood, students and children in schools, vacation and leisure centers, to make them aware of eco-citizen actions, use of alternative transport or to invite them to the maintenance of shared gardens, details the civic service website.
Volunteers can also inventory protected animals or exceptional flora, within associations for the protection of endangered species.
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This is the case at the Bird Protection League (LPO), where 150 young people are welcomed each year for environmental protection operations.
“These missions are in the general interest and meet the needs of young people who have an awareness of ecology but do not know how to help,” underlines the president of the LPO, Allain Bougrain-Dubourg.
By joining us, they can plant the roots of a vocation to later become a scientist, animator in the animal world or a manager of the natural environment.
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Also read: Between farmers and ecology, why things get so stuck
“If it’s for a first commitment, it’s quite good,” admits Stephen Kerckhove, general director of the Agir pour l’Environnement association.
But these young people should not be a sort of free substitute for already existing jobs, like our nature animators whose job cannot be improvised.”
Director of programs for the Climate Action Network, Anne Bringault is even more scathing: “Gabriel Attal completely missed the subject of ecological planning, because how could 50,000 young people initiate the transformation of entire sections of our economy?
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