The Ambassadors of France Benevolat

Hello, my name is Guillaume. I'm 22 years old

and I'm going to tell you about my voluneer journey, and my life journey.

How did you meet France Benevolat?

With France Benevolat, it started when I was in high school

where I had started my bac 'S' at the time.

I went there because I was hesitating between

becoming an architect or a cabinetmaker

so I took the broadest route.

In the end I considered myself a school failure

because I didn't find much for myself in that sector

But I was lucky enough to have a volunteer workshop in my high school

with Nathalie Tisserand, so I participated.

One of the principles was knowledge sharing,

so you could exchange a guitar lesson for a drawing lesson

or give a maths lesson for an English lesson

and I started to become a project initiator.

What did France Benevolat bring to you?

For me, it served more as an opening

in fact, I was very stuck in high school

with work, with control and so on

and I totally got out of that

by meeting people, volunteers too

I met Nathalie, other volunteers,

those who looked after the range, for example

were volunteers too.

And after discussing, and doing small projects

and meeting others, it opened up more horizons.

I found myself talking to a lot of these people

I used to hang out with at the time

about what I could do,

and there were quite a few who told me

that if you want to try, you can.

That motivated me to find a good school.

Where are you today?

Today, we are at la Bonne Graine, where we are filming

it is the school where I am currently studying.

It's a furniture school that offers courses concerning furniture and cabinet making.

There is also courses on gliding, framing, upholstering

everything to do with furniture making, but taken back to traditional methods

there is a history to the art within the furniture's history, in general

and even in Europe's history.

There is downstairs, which is really interesting,

it allows you to practice a little

and to see where your imagination takes you.

And there's the workshop course

where we can put into practice

that which we want to discuss with the teacher

about what we have already done or not.

There's a special atmosphere in the workshop

where you can get along with your classmates

where you can joke together with them and the teacher while you work,

There's a certain amount of autonomy that's given to us.

Volunteering in one word?

Volnteering in one word for me is "sharing"