the Saint-Bernard parish, one of the last places of reception for migrants

Every Saturday from 7 a.m., around a hundred migrants from Eritrea, Sudan, Mali, Afghanistan, etc. line up in front of the premises of the Saint-Bernard parish, located in the Goutte-d’Or district, to benefit from a breakfast (coffee, buttered bread and hard-boiled egg) and access to the cloakroom. Throughout the week, the hundred volunteers from the Solidarités Saint-Bernard association – which opens the place to women on Thursday mornings at 8 a.m. – take turns sorting the clothes donated by Emmaüs, the Zara brand, the Saint-Jean-Baptiste-de-Grenelle parish or the Red Cross. An initiative that is all the more valuable as “we are one of the last services of this type open in Paris,” underlines Michel Antoine, president of the association.

Accessible to all without conditions, “the Saint-Bernard locker room is not just a place for distributing clothing and hygiene products. It is also a place of integration into civic life, where migrants find attentive listening to their problems,” explains Laurence Chavanes. A retired teacher, this energetic septuagenarian continues: “I help young people with their procedures at Ofpra (French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons). I am in contact with the Little Missionary Sisters of Charity who can sometimes accommodate a single mother with a child. I identify minors so that they don’t stay on the street…”

A tailor-made welcome

Benevolent help from which Bah benefited, in CAP electricity in a high school in the beautiful districts of Paris. The story of this young 15-year-old Guinean, who intends to continue with his professional baccalaureate, is hardly believable. Sent to France by his uncle on a boat that almost sank in the Mediterranean, he presented himself for the first time in the locker room in June 2024. If he returns there today to lend a hand, it is because he has not forgotten the energy deployed by Laurence to succeed in sending him to school and thus offering him a prospect for a professional future.

The association, partly funded by the Notre-Dame Foundation, also offers free French lessons. Parish priest, Constant Munkala highlights how essential this tailor-made welcome is. “Coffee doesn’t seem like much, but here the message is deeper. We see Christ in the person of the migrant.”