This year, Bachelor 1 students from the Chambéry campus donated part of the profits from their Prospecting & Sales Challenge 2022 to the ZICOMATIC charity. Here’s a look back at the event with Clément Dumont, the association’s chairman.
Antoine Rousseau: Could you tell us about your association?
Clément Dumont: ZICOMATIC is an association with a somewhat pretentious but necessary objective: to combat the isolation of people with disabilities through culture, for children, adults and the elderly, whatever their disability. We’re trying to do our utmost, firstly in the region, and then increasingly throughout France.
AR: Why did you come to INSEEC Chambéry?
CD: We were pleasantly surprised to see that students, and human beings at that, had rallied to raise funds for the association. So today I’ve come to meet the students and thank them for the €3,000 they’ve raised through their work. This cheque will enable us to finance a project that is close to our hearts… The launch of an inclusive cultural café, the Cozi’ Café in Saint Alban-Leysse. Together with the students, we voted on the idea of allocating this sum to this project!
AR: Can you tell us a bit about your meeting with the students?
CD: I met them with the idea of keeping things fairly simple… The aim was to present the ZICOMATIC association and my career path to them, because we’re also in a school context. I felt they were very attentive! What touched me and brought everyone together was that, once again, before being students, they are human beings. We all have to meet people with disabilities. No one, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, is immune from having a disability. I saw intrigued, intriguing looks, kind eyes and I sensed, given their commitment to raising these funds, an interest in this association and in disability.
AR: How did you come to meet INSEEC?
CD: 4 years ago, we organised a photo exhibition at the school… 2 metre high portraits of disabled children, which we displayed in the school for 1 month. Since then, INSEEC has been very supportive of our work on the human and disability aspects… We were delighted to learn at the end of 2022 that we had been ‘selected’ to benefit from this sum.
AR: What are your future plans for your association?
CD: We have projects all year round! We work with around 150 medical and social facilities in the region. That’s thousands and thousands of people with disabilities. We offer concerts and cultural projects all year round in these facilities. We also give people access to mainstream culture… For example, we offer 1,000 tickets to handball matches at the Phare in Chambéry for people with mental, psychological or physical disabilities. We also do a lot of awareness-raising in companies. We also have 5 exhibitions touring the whole of France. We really have this idea of saying, for once, thanks to my brother or sister’s disability, I can do something exceptional.
AR: If you could say one last word to the students about this project…
CD: The first word that comes to mind is THANK YOU! After that, thank you means anything and everything, but what I’m pleased about and what’s important to us with the association is that we’ve dedicated this money to a particular project. Unfortunately for you, it’s a project to which you’re all welcome (Laughs). This café is open to everyone, so we’re expecting you to come and take part in some workshops with us and have some fun. We could even organise an inclusive concert in the school. It would be a great opportunity to meet disabled people and see how happy they are… We forget that too from time to time!
Congratulations to all the Bachelor 1 students for their magnificent participation in this challenge, which every year enables associations to launch magnificent projects.