Paris 2024, the Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games and the French Development Agency (AFD) will support 26 high-level sports projects for 8 months, including 16 from Africa. The objective: to publicize projects with a strong social and / or environmental impact.
Concentrated, in streetwear, the personalities succeed one another with entrepreneurial projects on PowerPoint. But here it is not a common business incubator program. All the project leaders are or have been high level athletes. ” It’s about realizing this belief that athletes are the champions of their sport, but they can also bring very positive things to society. ”Explains Olympe Chabason of the Paris 2024 team. Throughout their careers, they have developed the skills of“ accomplished entrepreneurs ”, she assures us.
For eight months, these 26 personalities are trained to prepare a business plan, raise funds and optimize communication around their project. ” Some athletes were at the start of the idea of a project, others were already quite advanced », Specifies Olympe Chabason, the program therefore adapts to the needs of each individual. Athletes’ projects are diverse, whether or not they are related to sports practice. However, they all share the desire to have a strong social and / or environmental impact.
Aby Gaye: Basketball and Confidence
Aby Gaye is French of Senegalese origin. This 26-year-old young woman has been a professional basketball player since 2013. If high-level sport occupies a large part of her time, she is also involved in her association Terang’Aby. In 2007, she returned to Senegal and was shocked by the location of the depigmentation. ” Especially how much the youngest already like this kind of exercises, explains Aby Gaye. And so I asked myself how I could engage at my level to change mentalities a little, and how I could change the dark skin on the continent.. »
Since 2018, she has been organizing basketball camps for young girls in which different professionals (psychologists, dermatologists, midwives, businesswomen, women leaders) address different themes of self-confidence and self-esteem. Aby Gaye notes that Senegalese teenage girls are confronted with imported beauty dictates, models they face on a daily basis. ” The idea for us is to compensate a little for all that and to say to these young girls “you are beautiful as you are” value yourself through your identity.“”, Specifies the player.
She wants to use this program to create a social business model to continue the camps for free, but offer paid online training content. Varied content that would target individuals as well as institutions, schools or NGOs. The goal for Aby Gaye: ” Make all those things available that you don’t necessarily learn at school, but which are essential in life ».
Hortense Diedhiou: taking care of the school luggage of athletes
Hortense Diedhiou was born in the south of Senegal, in Casamance. She is proud of her Diola heritage and the traditional wrestling she practiced there as a child. However, embarrassed by the nudity imposed by this practice and after seeing a Japanese judokate, she launches into judo. Hortense Diedhiou is a relatively small, very energetic woman, four times African champion. Without makeup she says: ” I have a very small baggage. It was very difficult for me to find a job, to express myself. When you win a medal you want to express yourself correctly, when you take the plane you have to fill out forms… »
On the strength of her experience, Hortense Diedhiou decided to build a judo center in Senegal where athletes can follow school training at the same time. ” I would like every young person who wants to learn to read and write at a high level She insists. The judoka insists on the need to have a minimum school background in particular to be able to defend his interests, for example to be able to read a contract.
« And what do we do after the career?, she says. Many are unprepared “Many retired professional athletes from the continent are falling into oblivion and uncertainty,” she says. It really hurts for an athlete who has made a lot of sacrifices for his country, to be at zero, without work. It’s very difficult », She testifies. Hence the need, according to her, to have a ” small school baggage »To find a professional activity after exercise.
The judoka has already built part of her center. With this program, she hopes to complete her project and open it for the 2024 Olympic Games and, above all, to be able to welcome athletes for the preparation of the Youth Olympic Games scheduled for Dakar in 2026.
Roger Amegbeto: a swimming pool for all
Roger Amegbeto is a young Togolese who participated in the Youth Olympic Games and the World Championships in Shanghai. His father worked in a hotel and when he saw expatriates swimming, he turned to this unusual activity in Togo, as in many countries on the continent. For many people, water remains the source of many fears. ” Culturally, the ancients were afraid of water. Water is considered to be something associated with ghosts, mermaids and the like. Families didn’t want children to go in the water ” , He says.
More soberly, today there is no public swimming pool in Togo. ” I was sent abroad because there was no adequate structure He adds. The only swimming pools in the country are private and therefore very inaccessible to Togolese. A nautical center project therefore seemed relevant to him. For me, it is important to be able to pass on in my country what I have learned in France since 2012 and to pass this experience on to young athletes in my country. The insists.
He hopes that thanks to this infrastructure, many will be able to learn to swim and take advantage of the many water-related activities. He also hopes to train lifeguards in this future complex who will be able to transmit this knowledge, but also to protect the coast which is today unsupervised for bathers. Roger Amegbeto has purchased land for his complex and much remains to be done. He also hopes that his project will be able to see the light of day in 2024.
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