August 1997 – N°27 – Report – ENGLISH

As one of the most remarkable events to take place at the end of the century, the World Cup represents a unique chance for young people, an occasion not to be missed. FRANCE 98 Informations takes a look at the range of ambitious projects springing up all over France, which are being initiated or backed by the CFO and the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sport, and which are clear proof of the dynamic enthusiasm of young people the world over for this great gathering.

“Making FRANCE 98 a World Cup for young people is not going to be an empty slogan, by any stretch of the imagination,” says Fernand Sastre, Co-president of the Committee, as he has done on many occasions. This has been a key element in the CFO’s organisational strategy, and direct proof can now be seen all across the board. Starting with ticketing: a quarter of FRANCE 98 PASSES sold by the French Organising Committee have been bought by under-25’s. A state of affairs made possible by a highly accessible pricing policy. As for the recruiting of the 12,000 volunteers for the World Cup, young people have shown an overwhelming motivation and keenness to take part in the event. Out of the 16,000 pre-selected candidates, 42% are between 18 and 25. A real turn-out. Their enthusiasm and support will be seen (and no doubt heard!) later this year on 4 December in the stands of Marseille’s Stade Vélodrome, because the majority of spectators invited to attend the Draw for the World Cup finals will consist of youngsters. One thing is already clear: there’ll be no shortage of young people in the stadiums and the organisational set-up of FRANCE 98!

All the same, as not everyone will be able to get hold of a seat or join in the Volunteer programme, the CFO didn’t want to stop there. Its policy was designed to embrace young people of all ages, all nationalities and in all walks of life, by involving them in the event in a variety of different ways. To do this, the Ministry for Youth Affairs and Sport and the CFO have been working together on projects – initiating, backing, and getting them off the ground – in a number of fields such as training, employment, entertainment and cultural exchanges. A committee was set up with the brief of searching out projects on various scales – local, national, private and public – to ensure that they see the light of day. Whether they have been dreamed up by an association, a sports movement or an administrative body, all these projects show considerable creativity, an understanding of what is at issue beyond the sporting aspect of the World Cup, and a commitment to help youngsters. For their part, the World Cup and Organising Committee Partners, whose involvement in these projects consists of crucial financial or logistical support, have shown their total willingness to give their partnership this extra dimension, in direct line with CFO objectives as a whole.

This general mobilisation extends equally to the ten World Cup host cities, where a plethora of entertainment projects have sprung to life as well. It all means that FRANCE 98 will be a great and universal celebration for everybody, an event that really brings people together..

SCOLAFOOT

Free expression

Scolafoot concerns 800,000 children in their last year of primary education in both public and private schools throughout mainland France and its overseas territories. The aim is to encourage them to demonstrate their talents in this cultural and sporting project, the brainchild of the USEP (a primary education sports union). It consists of a competition open to all the classes eligible, whose task is to create original work. They can do this through various mediums (free expression in the form of posters, large-scale pictures, works of art, videos and Internet pages), and will base their work on themes covered during the course of the school year (French regions, sport within society and so on), and having close links with FRANCE 98. Two preliminary rounds are planned between September and March in order to select more than 2,000 children, who will then meet each other, and be given seats for one of the World Cup round of sixteen matches. On the Partners’ front, France Telecom, the Official Telecommunications Operator for the World Cup, has chosen to back Scolafoot as a project combining the educational, the collaborative and the festive. Objectives which strike a real chord with France Telecom, which for 10 years now has been practising a company policy of support for young people and the educational community.

Let’s go FRANCE 98

Discovering France…

Any Football World Cup is a unique chance to promote the image of the host country all over the world. “Let’s go FRANCE 98 ” is a world-wide competition open to foreign students of the French language, between 16 and 20, and organised by the network of 120 French embassies and 500 French cultural establishments abroad (art centres, institutions, and “Alliances Franaises” linked with the Foreign Affairs Ministry). In July 1998, 700 graduates, chosen not just for their advanced skills in French but also their potential as “ambassadors” who can do justice to their country, will be invited for a fortnight to watch some of the World Cup matches in Paris and the provinces, and participate in a range of cultural and tourist-related activities introducing them to the delights of France.

Formacoupe 98

A world at play

This programme is designed for all young people between 15 and 18 in the 21 countries covered by French co-operational activities. With the Ministry for Co-operation network acting as intermediary, football matches are to be staged in towns in Africa, Haiti and Mauritius, the best teams being rewarded with sports equipment. After a long qualifying round finishing with tournaments at Conakry (for West Africa and the neighbouring states), Ougadougou (for East Africa and Sahel), Brazzaville (for Central Africa), Port-au-Prince (for Haiti) and Mauritius (for Indian Ocean countries), 5 teams will be invited to France during the World Cup to watch various games and play friendly matches against local teams.

Bubbles and balls

Cartoon-time

This is a Ministry of Culture project which aims to promote artistic expression in youngsters aged between 11 and 20. They are to design cartoon strips based on the FRANCE 98 theme evoking the idea of sport and universal festivity: “the beauty of a world at play”. The competition, open to all educational establishments falling within the province of the Ministry for Education, is inspired by the Angoulême international cartoon-strip festival. A jury will decide the winners from each age group, and the prizes will consist of seats at various World Cup matches.

Euro-universities – FRANCE 98

A meeting point for European students

As part of the European SOCRATES programme, 150 final-year university students fluent in French will be selected for an 8-week stay in various French universities so that they can participate in the organisation of the World Cup. Their particular job will be as liaison officers, especially in the reception of different people coming from abroad (spectators, press, VIPs and so on). This imaginative initiative came from the Ministry for Education, and could well be the prototype for further projects like this during other big European events.

Young European: FRANCE 98 volunteers

An inter-culturall dynamic

In 1996, the European Commission launched a operation entitled “European voluntary service”, designed to provide complementary education and training for young people through their participation in a general project with an NGO (non-governmental organisation), a sports federation or a humanitarian association. With this idea in mind, the Ministry for Youth Affairs and Sport has launched an initiative whereby 150 young people from all over Europe will spend the first school term of 1998 in France before eventually joining the body of 12,000 volunteers who will be working for the World Cup.

Local World Cup initiatives

A celebration for everyone

The Ministry for Youth Affairs and Sport has a specific goal for this programme: to find original ideas and help to make them come about. Here, any young association members, together with those in charge, who want to organise events such as sports tournaments, competitions and artistic projects as fringe events to the actual World Cup should get in touch with the different World Cup regional organisation committees, which will back any projects with potential. The aim is to promote creativity and make FRANCE 98 a grand celebration for everyone.

Employment in sport and FRANCE 98

Entertainment with real back-up

For the World Cup, the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sport will be reinforcing its support for job creation in the field of sport by offering supplementary aid (in the form of FF10,000) to every club that provides an instructor to a regional organising committee with the aim of putting on a sporting or cultural event based around FRANCE 98. 200 young instructors will thereby be able to enhance their own professional profile, as well as being part of an extraordinary occasion.

Snickers – FRANCE 98 tour

The fair-play marathon

An association called “Les Ados du Sport” (“sporting teenagers”) is behind this project. Using the same idea as the Olympic flame, its aim is to create an epic “Fair-play banner” through a unique exploit linking 162 metropolitan towns, which will thus be directly associated with the World Cup. Every day for six months two athletes will run half the distance of a marathon (a total of more than 7,000 km). They will start on 4 December, the day of the Draw for the World Cup finals, and will continue till 10 June, the day of the opening match. Snickers, an official FIFA Partner, long-standing champion of fair-play, and already much involved with young people through the Snickers City Challenge, is the obvious associate for this highly original project. Here, various entertainments, game competitions and lotteries will bring together 10,000 children, aged 10-16, during the course of the tour. And a World Cup match will also be on the programme.

Formacoupe 98

A training programme at the heart of the event

In keeping with the volunteer programme and with the agreement of their employers (local communities, associations, sports clubs and public bodies), young people with “town job” contracts will be selected and trained to perform operational work during the World Cup: reception hosts and hostesses, controllers at access points, guides and so on. The CFO will give financial backing to the training of these young people, who will gain valuable experience as well as useful extra skills.

Le challenge Edmond Michelet 1998

Training spotters!

The Edmond Michelet Challenge is an event that takes place every year in May and June for young people between 14 and 18 who fall within the province of the judicial youth protection section of the Ministry of Justice. The event involves athletics, football, swimming and basket-ball meetings in the regions. The finals are to be the occasion of a national gathering in the Seine-Saint-Denis area, and will give 500 young people the chance to visit the two stadiums in the Paris metropolitan area or watch the training sessions of a team that has qualified for the World Cup.

Cités foot

This “Cité Foot” project initiated by Siner’J – a network of urban area associations promoting the social integration of young people – is to set up inter-neighbourhood football tournaments in 128 towns throughout France for youngsters born in 1984 and after. After several qualifying rounds, the winning team will play against a team from Brazil as a curtain-raiser to the World Cup semi-final at Marseille. Similarly, as a warm-up to the other semi-final being played at the Stade de France, two other teams of youngsters representing Mexico and South Africa will also have their special chance to “foot it featly” on the sacred turf. The project is backed by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sport, the FFF, Adidas, McDonald’s and Danone. Cités Foot will extend as far as Mexico in order to select the guest team there (the South African Federation being responsible for the selection of its own team). And everywhere, Cités Foot will be calling on youngsters’ passion for playing football – an excellent way of learning integration and solidarity – with the aim of setting up forums, sports meetings and neighbourhood festivities.

T’es jeune, t’es foot

In launching its “T’es jeune, t’es foot” project (“you’re young, you’re football-mad”), the French Football Federation, backed by Coca-Cola and Crédit Agricole, will be realising the dream of thousands of young footballers: to take an active part in the World Cup. The programme, tested at Lyon with great success during the Tournoi de France, consists of two major operations:

• Curtain-raising matches: for the first time in the history of the World Cup, 2,400 11- to-12-year old boys and girls will be playing curtain-raisers to 60 World Cup matches, as part of 240 teams of 10 players (boys and girls) of which 6 will be intercontinental teams who have successfully won through.
• Ball boys and girls: 1768 footballers between 11 and 16, divided into groups of 14 (one group per half, so as to involve as many young people as possible), will be chosen by the Football districts with the active participation of the Partners: Crédit Agricole through its Challenge de l’Offensive, Coca-Cola through its teams around the world, and the Coca-Cola Football Challenge for young people in France. “T’es jeune, t’es foot” also involves events sponsored by Crédit Agricole that will be marking the calendar leading up to the World Cup:
• at “D-100” (March 1998): the administrative division finals for the under 11s,
• the second beginners’ national day event in May 1998 (after the first, which took place in May 1997): an unforgettable occasion for 150,000 young registered players of Crédit Agricole’s district and regional branches.