They are all mobilizing to defend learning

Education. Two hundred people gathered yesterday to prevent the learning center from closing. The demonstrators demand accountability from the management of Alméa.

Two hundred people gathered yesterday near the Alméa Chaumont site. A petition which already has 1,800 signatures. The mobilization to save apprenticeship in Haute-Marne is growing while, on Monday, management announced the closure of the Haute-Marne sites.

Proof of this is that the event brought together trainers, work-study students, but also families and business leaders. According to Olivier Suc, the trainers’ union representative, it is about maintaining the already fragile economic fabric in a territory with the lowest purchasing power. For him, it is impossible to think that apprentices will go elsewhere, due to lack of mobility or means for accommodation and travel. If Alméa closes, “their future is ruined”. In the same way, due to a lack of work-study workers, businesses in Haute-Marne are threatened.

Support that nourishes

Olivier Suc returned to the essential role of the structure formerly called CFA. It has enabled countless work-study students to learn to work and realize a professional dream. For him, all these young people and the trainers have feelings. “They are not beasts. The CFA must live to inspire vocations. “For him, it is inconceivable to wipe learning off the map of Haute-Marne, to sacrifice humans who have a face and who are not just numbers.

Marie Michel, management and management trainer, highlights the contempt and silence shown by management in hiding its intentions and the situation of the accounts. “Haute-Marne cannot be the adjustment variable for Alméa Champagne-Ardenne. “Clearly, among the demonstrators, three demands come back and are addressed to the politicians who have taken up the matter: “go very quickly because the days are counting to organize the exams and the start of the school year, take down the Chaumont d’Alméa site for lack of confidence and above all so as not to bail out the other departments, and examine the accounts closely.” Needless to say, the transfer to Troyes of the educational manager starting this week pushes the Chaumont team to be wary of the management’s real intentions. Vincent David, CGT representative, speaks of a “feeling of being screwed” with “the fear of discovering even more in the accounts”.

For Marie Michel, “it is impossible to sacrifice the territory and deprive it of excellent know-how”. She sees in the mobilization a message of attachment: “We remain standing. Learning must live. » As for François Curinier, who says he launched into a hunger strike impulsively, he believes he has regained his dignity thanks to the mobilization of everyone. He shouts it: “Your support nourishes me. HAS”

Frédéric Thévenin

f.thevenin@jhm.fr

Létitia Guillo talks about her attachment to Alméa

Upset by the possible closure of the Chaumont d’Alméa site, Létitia Guillo decided to tell her story and her unwavering link with the structure. Last Friday, she talked about her story and, at the same time, that of her husband Tristan.

Létitia Guillo joined the CFA of Chaumont (the former name of Alméa) in 2016, in a dynamic of employment support. “I spent a year there training as a pastry chef,” she explains. She remembers the teachers involved, the friends, the internships and the pastries. She even met her husband there, pastry chef-chocolate maker-ice cream maker-confectioner-caterer, today pastry chef at Leclerc in Bar-sur-Aube.

Létitia Guillo says: “This CFA made me discover the passion for pastry, mutual aid, friendship. Our friends we met there were present at our wedding, one of whom was my witness. Our pastry teacher was also present. Throughout these years, they have witnessed our love and our evolution. HAS”

She stayed three years within the walls of this CFA and two years at the second chance school, whose premises are on the site. Nine years later, she explains that their couple is still attached to this school on a work-study basis. “We stop by the CFA to say hello whenever we can and it’s always a pleasure to go back there for everything they’ve been able to do for us, for the future they’ve managed to give us and, for that alone, I can’t thank them enough. HAS”

With tears in her eyes, Létitia Guillo implores all forces so that Alméa is saved. “The future of young people in Haute-Marne depends on it. We must give back the desire to our young people to fight, to work with their hands. “The couple is ready to support the fight of trainers and to follow, “with pleasure”, each event which would show the indispensable nature of work-study training in the Haut-Marne region.