We do not enter room C17 like any room at the Léon-Blum high school.
This Wednesday, it is a student from the first professional section “commerce and sales professions” (MCV) who guides us through the twists and turns of this school in Créteil (Val-de-Marne).
The teenager leaves us at the entrance to a sales and work space that everyone is talking about here: the high school's new solidarity shop.
Hanging on racks or placed on shelves, next to pairs of shoes and accessories of all kinds, rows or piles of clothes are just waiting for buyers.
Colorful posters announce unbeatable prices: count here 5 euros for the purchase of clothing for women or men, 12 euros for three and 15 euros for five.
And in the children's section, it's almost a given!
Créteil, Wednesday March 6, 2024. The team of the Emmaüs association - la Friperie solidaire, which has five stores in Val-de-Marne and Paris, is very proud of this partnership with the Léon high school. -Blum.
These prices owe nothing to chance: “These are the ones we charge in all our stores,” says Ludovic Vasseur, director of the Emmaüs – La Friperie solidaire association.
“This citizen project promotes the work of our students”
To get the project off to the best possible start, this structure based in Choisy-le-Roi delivered several hundred parts from its stock here, carefully sorted.
What happens next will depend on the success of this space, currently presented as ephemeral.
Read alsoChoisy-le-Roi: with the “Abbé’s Lab”, Emmaüs and its solidarity thrift store release their first collection
For Jacques Rusin, the principal of Blum high school, this solidarity shop “checks all the boxes”.
In addition to evolving in the field of the social and solidarity economy, “this citizen project promotes the work of our students in the professional section,” he appreciates.
“The objective is to go well beyond the simple sale of these products,” says Nadia Feqri, who is one of the three teachers involved in this educational project.
This space will indeed allow students to implement in a practical manner what they have learned during their training.
Installation of products, welcoming customers, sales, running the cash register... Kenza, Chrystel and the twenty friends in their class will be mobilized here very quickly, in shifts.
“The store will be open to students this Thursday afternoon and to parents Saturday morning,” specifies the first.
“We can’t wait to open,” smiles the second, who is excited at the idea of rolling up her sleeves, “while serving a good cause.”