Emmaus International in Benin: Support for the Health Mutual and Container Shipping

       Grégoire Chauveau and Marie Lucas, members of the general secretariat of Emmaus International, completed their visits to the Emmaus Benin communities two weeks ago. Over more than a week, they met with different community actors and workers at their workplaces to learn more about the specifics of each project and activity.

Grégoire and Marie's work is particularly focused on two programs of Emmaus International; the Health Mutual program and the program for sending containers from other Emmaus groups. The goal of this meeting is to gather information from the communities and beneficiaries to jointly define a development strategy based on real needs and everyone's input.

   The health mutual is a community collective care program. Thanks to the monthly contributions of members, a community fund is established to reimburse, up to 70%, the costs of medications, surgeries, biomedical analyses, and nursing medical acts.

Meeting with the program's board members and discussing the project's developments since its inception allowed Grégoire and Marie to understand the operation, goals, and local challenges of the project accurately; and thus propose support that aligns with the reality and needs of the members.

       The container shipping program constitutes the main economic activity of the Emmaus communities in Benin. The Bric-a-Brac is a solidarity shop that values second-hand objects, sent by Emmaus groups in containers, notably from Europe, whose sales finance social projects. Grégoire and Marie were able to meet the activity's managers, visit the Bric-à-Bracs, and exchange with customers. They collected testimonials from both people working within the activity and those external to it.

      This work of meeting and exchange is motivated by the desire to transcribe the reality of the communities and to highlight the real needs of local communities to collectively address the challenges these communities face. At the end of this visit, Grégoire and Marie were able to enrich their vision of our actions at a local level but also develop connections with all those who work daily for social changes.

We affirm the importance and usefulness of this experience. It represents our vision of human exchanges, which are at the heart of our work and link the different communities.

We wish Grégoire and Marie a good return to France and hope to see them soon in Benin !