Treize Voyages: tourism and leisure for everyone
Paris 12e, Saint-Denis (93)
Social integration combined with genuine vocational training
The association Treize Voyages was set up in 1992 by Eric Piel, a psychiatrist at the Paul Guiraud Hospital in Villejuif, and has the status of a social integration undertaking. The aim was both to enable certain patients to make their way back into working life and to offer users of specialised hospitals holidays adapted to their specific needs. The association specialises in planning and running holidays for people with disabilities, whether they be individuals or members of health-care teams and services.
Being officially recognised as a social integration undertaking, Treize voyages first of all aims to offer quality employment and specialised vocational training to people who are excluded from society or are far removed from working life. With a permanent team of six supervisors, it looks after eight paid employees who are given fixed-term vocational integration contracts for a maximum period of 24 months. Continued supervision is necessary, especially at the beginning, as the post of trip packager/sales representative (forfaitiste-vendeur) requires considerable effort on the part of the employees concerned. The reason for this is that each employee deals with all the aspects of an application: the initial contacts with the client and handling the application; drawing up a commercial proposal, in many cases after negotiations with the suppliers of services followed by discussions with clients; the actual organisation of the trip; and, finally, the administration of the application and invoicing.
The work is monitored by the team of supervisors, who also provide additional training (job simulation exercises) for those who need it.
Employees are thus motivated by an interesting job that involves considerable responsibility, a factor that encourages personal development and self-confidence. They also acquire genuine skills that can be transferred to many other fields, and this opens the door to the job market.
The Treize Voyages team ensures that long-standing employees are involved in looking after and training the new ones, which helps them to feel they are doing something useful and adds to their dignity.
With its in-depth knowledge of the needs of the health and social sector, the association plans low-priced trips that are adapted to individual requirements and always takes people to places open to the general public, thus fostering the social inclusion of its clients.
There are several choices available: Catalogue holidays (unaccompanied trips selected by Treize Voyages for the quality of the location and the reception provided); Accompanied holidays: "Treiz'tivals" (one or two weeks), "Treiz'balades" (an afternoon) and "Treiz'capades" (a weekend), with a professional carer, who is encouraged by the success of these leisure and relaxation trips; and Customised holidays. Since it was set up, the association has organised trips for more than 20,000 people.
Even though it is inevitably more difficult (than in a traditional business) to focus exclusively on the actual work factor in the case of employees undergoing vocational integration (who are necessarily less productive, at least at the beginning, but are just as motivated as anyone else, if not more so), the association wants to respond to the economic needs of the market and is rising to the challenge: it has an office in Rungis and a shop in Paris that account for 80% of its turnover (€580,000), the remainder coming from subsidies from various public and private partners.
