Cap berriat, l'assocation

Cap Berriat is a non profit organisation (NGO), working with the aim to foster an active citizenship of the youth. One of the tools we choose to develop to achieve this, is to support youth projects, i.e:
-    To put youth in the position of project holders,
-    To promote the development of collective dynamics and actions.
Composition of the organisation:
We have a team of 10 employees, and a board of 10 people.
Our board is mainly composed of youth, less than 30 years old.
We try to work closely between the board and the team; with regular common times to debate on our projects.
We welcome and/or support per year around 250 projects.

Our main activity:  youth projects support

The main activity of the organisation
The support of youth projects is the main pillar of our activities, a basis to activate such developments as collective actions, link with youth participation….

 

To contact us

by phone: 04.76.96.60.79

by eMail : contact@cap-berriat.com

Cap Berriat is also on Facebook

We start 11 years ago to change the project of our organisation: indeed, we were a traditional Youth Home, proposing consumption of leisure activities for kids and youth. But youth were not coming anymore in the place, as it is in a lot of traditional youth homes. But some youngs were with passions, as hip hop: the former team of Cap Berriat started to support them to develop by themselves their passions, through the creation of non profit organisations from young people, and a space of services for them. But what we gave them at first was confidence: to believe they are able to set up activities and projects by their own, and that it can be not only a hobby but also a life project. For example, we support some projects in developing employment in their organisation.
Today, we try to keep this space of confidence and services; and we don’t organise anymore traditional activities as dance or music lessons:  some youth organisations we support are doing it.

How do we work concretely to support young people projects?  
We are not simply the relay of public plans or measures: we really start from the project and the people, in his whole and his complexity.
We work starting from the young people and his project, adapting our time and rhythm to him.
What we can offer ?
-Technical and organisational support and advocacy.
- Information about existing measures, fundraising opportunities, legal frameworks and rules
- Support regarding administrative needs, but also on accounting  
- Methodological support
- Job creation
- setting up of a development plan for the organisation….
- Links to networks

The young people's projects incubator
Cap Berriat is also developing a young people's projects incubator: a space to grow up with concrete services, but also more…
The young people's project incubator is a space to permit young people to find support and services to succeed: they don’t receive only information, but they can also benefit from concrete services.
What we offer in our premises: spaces for offices and meetings; space for practice: dance, music; photocopier; video projector; camera, video camera…

More of it, we try to develop a spirit of “mutualisation” (collective sharing); to be more efficient, but also to create solidarity, exchanges, common projects; and collective actions when necessary.
For example: collective action to make local politics change the system of public grants to make it more open, to support an organisation which is in danger…

We also support some collective youth projects aiming at finding and organising premises in a collective management. We support them for technical aspects but as well as for the negotiation process with the municipality, which often doesn’t believe in this possibility of collective management of premises.

To encourage and create the conditions which allow such projects to emerge and to create cooperation and sharing, we try to impulse, to create spaces of meeting and sharing for new possibilities.

The work with the local authorities and institutions
We try to work with local authorities, through the representatives and the workers, in the aim to change the perception of youth: youth more as a ressource than a threat; and to change the practices on youth work actions: youth as a real actor at local level.
We experiment different ways to develop it:
-    studies on youth participation through their own projects
-    participation to official instances

But also experiences to create a space of meeting between the politics, officials, and the youth actors:
-    A festival forum on youth initiative, April 2006: 3 days mixing exhibitions, meetings between youth, representatives, youth workers…
-    Meetings between youth and local representatives, on specific topics as the youth housing; aiming to permit the expression of the ideas of youth, and to enter in a long term process between young people and institutions.
We develop or experiment also specific tools to create the right conditions for the youth to express itself: as a “ring of the hard topics”, a real box ring were you can put on debate strong issues between young people and representatives for example. You have few people on the ring itself, with an arbitrator.
We develop this tool to put on light that meetings with youth and representatives can be based on some contest, some violence because a need of reaction from the youth; but also that this ability of reaction, angriness sometimes of youth can be a good starting point for an exchange, if with arbitration and a good place.

On this field, we are experimenting, and sure we are open to any other ideas and experiment!