CAFÉ-TIERS
Amel Benzerga (Sciences Po), Eloi Delpierre (CRI), Leigh Sharpless (Harvard), Syrine Souissi (Sciences Po)
Café-Tiers is a non-profit café that will employ refugee people and be located along the Champs- Elysées. Social isolation and unemployment are two of the main challenges faced by refugee people when they arrive in France.
It will serve as a community and event space for both refugee and non-refugee communities, meant to promote the social integration of refugee people within Paris. Certain events will be intended to serve the refugee community (e.g. workshops, training, networking), and others will be open to the public and meant to sensitize Parisians through cultural events (e.g. music concerts, art exhibits, poetry readings). Café-Tiers is also a business and employer that specifically recruits refugee people, and as such, is expected to contribute to the initial economic integration of its staff into the Parisian workforce.
The business will be self-sustainable, where all revenue is reinvested, directly contributing to expenses such as employee salaries, inventory, event organization, and trainings. In our biological metaphor, the lungs of the Champs Elysées are damaged and un- able to fully perform their cultural and social functions by only attracting tourists. The transplant of new lungs, or of Café-Tiers, could be a way to oxygenate the population of this area.
