With its strong social safety net, France has not traditionally been a country with a strong culture of volunteerism. But that may be changing, with a new initiative to encourage people to give an hour of their time each month to help their neighbours.
"There are 65 million people in France. If each gives one hour, imagine what we could do? We can change the world," says Atanase Périfan.
He is behind L'Heure civique (the Civic Hour), a project that recruits people to volunteer an hour of their time each month to do tasks in their communities – tending to someone’s garden, helping with grocery shopping or giving homework help, for example.
Surveys show that about a quarter of the French population takes part in some volunteer activity, but in an organised way, through an organisation.
Filling the gap
"In France, the state is very present – maybe too much – but it cannot do everything," Périfan said, reflecting on France’s social model and pointing out that volunteers fill in the gap between what families do for each other and institutional support from the state.
"When the three levels – family, state and neighbours – work together, it makes everything better."
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The Civic Hour aims to get neighbours involved with helping each other.
Neighbourhoods are a particular focus for Périfan, who is at the origin of the now annual Fête des voisins – "neighbours' party" – which sees apartment buildings or neighbourhoods organise an event to get to know each other.
The first was a gathering of Périfan's own neighbours in Paris’s 17th arrondissement. He organised it after being horrified to learn that an elderly woman in his neighbourhood had died and her body had not been found for four months.
Listen to the history of the Fête des voisins in the spotlight on France podcast, here:
After a successful gathering, Périfan decided to try and spread the concept.
A local councillor in the arrondissement at the time – he is a now a deputy mayor, charged with social issues – he was no stranger to organising and picked up the phone to call round his colleagues to get them on board.
By the following year he had recruited 20 cities. Now, 25 years later, 5,000 cities across France officially endorse the Fête des voisins, with millions of people organising the gatherings each year.
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'Helping others brings happiness'
Périfan's association, Voisins solidaires ("Neighbours Together"), launched the Civic Hour initiative in 2021, in the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic, when people began helping each other out during lockdowns.
As he did with the neighbours' party, he began at home in his Paris neighbourhood. He then tested the idea in the Charente-Maritime department where he has a second home, before taking it to four other departments.
Today, more than 200 cities are taking part, with nearly 20,000 volunteers signed up – most of them young retirees, who had hesitated to get involved in an association.
Volunteering has dropped in recent years among older people, while it is on the rise with younger people. But the Civic Hour, with fewer constraints than other commitments, is appealing.
"Helping others brings a lot of happiness," Périfan says. "Happiness is not just about having money – happiness comes from relationships, helping others."
