Supporting food aid and other community action
Our belief
Our mission at PAUL is to create moments of sharing around healthy, good quality, enjoyable products. Sharing these good times also means thinking of those who need limited or regular food aid, by supporting appropriate charities, as well as bringing our support to those who take care of the sick.
Our initiatives
- Establish both local and national partnerships with organisations who collect unsold products from our stores
- Make donations to food banks
- Support some organisations in other ways, such as the donation of a vehicle, or providing meals for fundraising events
- Set up ‘product-sharing’ operations to benefit organisations who help patients
- Contribute to moments of pleasure and conviviality in the hospital environment, usually for sick children, but in 2020-2021, to benefit the care workers themselves who were put through so much during the COVID crisis.
Our goal
- Set up partnerships to collect unsold products from as many PAUL stores as possible
- Sustain our partnerships rather than multiply them, because these organisations also need a more long-term vision.
Our progress
- 19 tonnes of food donated to charities and food banks in 2019
- We support Secours Populaire Français, a non-profit organisation dedicated to fighting poverty and exclusion in France and throughout the world. We started out with a local partnership in the Limoges region, and have expanded this gradually to national level for the collection of unsold food from our stores at the end of the day. We also partner with them for some of their events, such as the 2019 Easter Egg Hunt. This brought together 15,000 people including 5,000 children, and raised €36,000 for the Paris branch of Secours Populaire Français.
- We support Restaurants du Coeur in France, a charity that distributes food packages and hot meals to those in need. In additional to donating products, notably through the regional committee for the North, for several years we have supported the Enfoirés annual concerts to raise funds for the charity. By donating meals, we help reduce the cost of these events.
- Since 2020 we have been raising funds during Pink October to benefit the Mon Bonnet Rose organization which supports women affected by breast cancer. In 3 years, more than 110,000 Euros have been donated to the organization thanks to the sale of raspberry macarons – their pink colour being in perfect solidarity.
- In 2022 we organized a sale of palmiers to benefit Action Against Hunger to help finance crisis programmes in Ukraine. Almost 20,000 Euros were collected to finance emergency actions to help refugees.
- We support Cékedubonheur. Since 2004, the CKDB association, chaired by Hélène Sy and sponsored by Valérie Damidot, Leïla Bekhti and Omar Sy, has been committed to bringing a little daily joy and magic to pediatric health care establishments in France. The goal is to recreate a social bond around children who are sometimes hospitalized for a long time. PAUL supports CKDB by providing meals for people visiting the children or by providing galettes des Rois (King cakes) for festive snacks.
