“The situation is serious and it will get worse”: student insecurity is causing damage on French campuses

"The situation is serious and it will get worse": student insecurity is causing damage on French campuses

Food aid “has become part of their daily lives,” notes Cop1. MAXPPP – KEVIN GUYOT/OUEST-FRANCE

20% of students are forced to resort to food aid. Four out of ten consider it.

Almost one in five students resort to food aid (18%), according to the annual barometer of the Cop1 association, published Thursday on the occasion of the inauguration of its first solidarity canteen in Paris.

Among them, 23% used it at least once a week and 42% several times a month.

“When one in five students uses food aid, this means that it has become part of the daily lives of some young people, underlines Jade El Ayadi Gaouaou, vice-president of Cop1 in Le Monde. The problem is no longer one-off, but systemic. Deprivation is now an integral part of students' lives."

"We will be unable to keep up"

Created during the health crisis to provide assistance to students in need, the association made this observation by supporting its investigation with data from an Ifop study and a consultation.

"The situation is serious, and it will get worse, worries the president of Cop1. Benjamin Flohic, in Le Parisien. Among the students who have not yet used it, 38% are considering doing so. We will be unable to keep up."

Because, at the same time, 36% of students often or occasionally skip meals due to lack of money. In the association's branches in the Antilles, two thirds of those surveyed regularly skip meals.

“It's scary”

“Even in the smallest towns where we have just arrived, like Lorient or Orléans, we have a return to school with an activity that we have rarely seen, notes Benjamin Flohic. We have students who tell us that they update the link (of meal distributions) to be able to register as for a concert. It's really scary. »

The activity of the association is growing, visibly. Now with a budget of 3.8 M€ per year, it provides ten deliveries per week in Île-de-France and at least one weekly in around twenty French cities.

It will open more branches in November, in Nancy and Limoges, then Saint-Denis, La Réunion and Toulouse by 2025. LFI MP Louis Boyard filed a petition on the National Assembly website on Thursday to request the generalization of the one-euro meal in university restaurants.

Many deprivations

But the deprivations are much wider. Four out of ten students have already given up on a visit to the gynecologist and one in four regularly lacks sanitary protection.

The association also calls on the government to increase the resources of the Crous on the housing front. According to its barometer, 27% of students have less than 50 euros per month, once their rent and charges have been paid. And 47% of them have between 50 and 200 euros. A percentage up 5% over a year.

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