INTERVIEW

In 1986,  with the computer boom in full swing,  Anne Dunoyer de Segonzac – by profession a town-planner – created the association L’enfant à l’hôpital (The child in hospital).  The aim was to provide top quality new technologies to the people who needed them most,  above all sick children and adolescents.  In 2008 L’enfant@l’hôpital was one of three organisations to receive funding from royalties on Carla Bruni-Sarkozy’s album Comme si de rien n’était (As if nothing had happened).  It is also to be the beneficiary of proceeds from the 14^th edition of the Designers’ Christmas Tree event.  Anne Dunoyer de Segonzac spoke to us about her association.

When and how was L’enfant à l’hôpital set up?

Our association works in conjunction with 50 different departments in 35 hospitals.  We intervene when asked to by the hospitals.   Children who are in hospital for long periods of time can fall victim to a series of social handicaps.  Often they are from families who are not able to look after them.  If care is not taken, it can be the start of a process of exclusion.  The association was created in the mid-80s,  but it really took off when the Internet came along. That was when we changed the name to L’enfant@l’hôpital. In 1998 we turned our minds to the work we should be doing in this new world of the Internet.  We wanted to go beyond merely organising chats between children.  We wanted to become a network, a learning platform.  We wanted to be like a little university, in which experts, explorers, etymologists, architects could share their experiences with isolated children and adolescents in hospitals, re-education centres or classes for the disabled.  Along with a company called Sekoya we tested out a first platform, Kanari. Then in 2005 we set up a new tool, Kolibri, which was complemented by Radio Kolibri, a media podcast.  These instruments are private and advertising-free forums which bring culture to sick children by encouraging friendly  exchanges over the Internet.

With what sort of people do these exchanges take place?

Experts or explorers.  For example there is one man – a public reader by profession – who is travelling from Saint-Malo to Bamako with a donkey.  There are four girls rowing across the Atlantic, and two cyclists going round the world.  They correspond with the children, sending messages from cybercafés.  Sick children have a particular need for heroes.  Ten years ago we were given another opportunity when the Polytechnique (élite university) offered us a partnership.  So in the 2009 school year we have had five volunteers from the Polytechnique who are doing their first year of ‘civilian service’.   Every day they go out to hospitals, re-education centres and classes for the disabled.  They host our Internet forums and provide follow-up to the reports from our experts and explorers.  That way they give the children a deeper knowledge of culture, history and geography.  In addition on Radio Kolibri the children  can do recordings, hear their own voices,  and focus on radio reports.  For many of them it’s a real revelation.  They discover what they are capable of.   One of the problems of our times is the way more and more children spend the whole day wearing ear-phones.   It’s also a help for the teachers and specialist educators.

Why computers?

We have a stock of 200 computers.  Computer technology is a tool which enables us to help isolated populations, especially children in hospital.  The reality of hospital life is infinitely varied.  Over the last five years, the demands on our services from psychiatric wards have gone through the roof.  There are an awful lot of children living in psychological distress, or autistic in one way or another, or suffering from dyslexia, or  with a phobia of school. In the old days they had a simple name for all these types: truants.   Nowadays, the first port of call is the hospital.   Then there are the children with really serious deformities. Some of them arrive straight from the aeroplane, with no documents, just a handwritten sign around their neck.  They’re sent to the hospitals, and may be stuck there for years.  Obesity has also become part of hospital life.  There are children who come to hospital to lose weight and learn how to eat properly.

You also conduct art therapy.

That’s right.  We’ve set up writing workshops for anorexic girls for example. Many of them are really gifted at writing, but their experience of school has been so sterile they come out totally lacking in confidence.  We have three art therapists in Strasbourg, in the Lyon-Valance region, and in the Paris region.  With great tact and sensitivity, they organise writing and drawing classes which psychiatrists now see as being genuinely effective forms of therapy.

What are your plans for 2010?

Our way of working is homeopathic.  We talk, we move forward, we evaluate, we progress.  Kolibri and Radio Kolibri – the exchange platforms which the association created for the purposes of this interactive university – are now free Internet tools which can be adapted for other establishments for children with learning difficulties. For example penal institutions, or schools in so-called difficult neighbourhoods or in the countryside, or classes for travelling people.   One thing we are focusing on is our work with the Lassalians and the Dominicans to adapt our methods for Roma children.  Every year now – because of the Schengen agreement – between 250,000 and 350,000 Roma families from the east, especially Romania, are crossing our borders. We cannot force them to sedentarise, but we can try to offer them a chance. The children rarely go to school.  But they do rummage through rubbish-bins for pencils and paper.

What is it that you need most today?

The association has just two paid-up members of staff.  Now we are taking on a third person, who till now has been on an internship.  Other than that the team is composed entirely of highly talented volunteers who offer their services on a case-by-case basis.  Our budget is 400,000 euros, of which half is cash. The other half is either philanthropic offerings in kind – for example from Toshiba which gives us computers; or philanthropic offerings in man-power, for example from the consultants at D2SI; or volunteer work.  We are so grateful for all the donors who have helped us along the way. What matters most is that the network continues to function.  And if we all get along, so much the better!