Castagnède Arnaud
Organization: Acta Vista
Year Founded: 2002
Country: France
Website: www.actavista.fr
Geographic Area of Impact: Cyprus,France,Greece,Italy,Malta.
Model: Hybrid Non-Profit
Focus: Labor Conditions and Unemployment.
Social Entrepreneur of the Year, France, 2005 The Innovation The Acta Vista association has been directed by its founder Arnaud Castagnede since its establishment in 2001. Acta Vista, a social enterprise, specializes in the restoration and enhancement of built heritage, for this purpose it devotes its savoir faire and expertise to the training and professional inclusion of people otherwise excluded from society. Acta Vista rapidly developed its activities in the field of the environment by means of the equipping, protection and enhancement of natural sites that are either in danger or are protected. In 2007, Acta Vista further strengthened its position as a social enterprise by adopting an ambitious plan to diversify its services. It became the Acta Vista Group and brought together the 6 subsidiaries it had set up and which work in France and also across Europe. During the same period it established A&V, which recruits and provides professional training for people without qualifications who seek to work in the building, logistics and environment sectors as well as for part-time recruitment agencies. Every year since then, more than 500 people, previously excluded both professionally and socially, have been recruited and employed by the Acta Vista Group on its work sites, 60% of these people have subsequently entered full-time employment. Background France possesses a heritage of buildings and environmental sites that requires a considerable amount of maintenance and restoration. At the same time it is confronted with a high level of unemployment, approximately 8%, which means that under-qualified people are often obliged to live with very low incomes from social benefits and often in very difficult situations. The Acta Vista social enterprise is able to address both of these problems and turn them into advantages. With this aim in mind, it employs people of all ages, from the age of 18 to 65, including those excluded from society, recent immigrants and the unemployed seniors on its work sites that restore and maintain built or natural heritage to enable them to find a place in society, to train and to gain professional work. Strategy Acta Vista works within the framework of European, national, and regional policy in the domains of professional and social inclusion. Acta Vista is supported by private as well as by public funds. The work sites can be run for large French companies such as Gaz de France Suez as well as for individuals or local authorities. Lafarge, the world leader in building materials, and which also shares Acta Vista’s values, has supported Acta Vista’s work since 2006. Enterprises, banks, foundations and individuals have also chosen to become involved (Société Générale Foundation, Heritage Foundation, Veolia Foundation, Banque Populaire Provençale et Corse Foundation). In 2009, two new profit-making social enterprises will be established in the industrial, environmental, and heritage sectors. A team of 40 salaried workers (project leaders, work site managers, psychologists, engineers, sustainable development specialists, human resources personnel) and external agents (architects, research units, professional organisations from the sector) work together on protected and/or classified sites. The objective of Acta Vista is to provide services that produce on site work of high quality and the successful and lasting inclusion of its employees. A work contract with a maximum duration of 12 months enables such people to obtain a status in society, to rediscover the dynamism of teamwork, attain a salary, and therefore restore their dignity. It then becomes possible to work with them towards their return to long-term employment in another company. Throughout the duration of this work contract, Acta Vista salaried workers analyse their financial, health, housing and professional situation and begins solid work in their free time to settle such problems one by one. This approach is led by the work site managers and the psychologists together, and also with the local social services and thus enables the full potential of each person to be evaluated. With the desire to invest more in the protection of the environment by controlling the impact of its activities on the environment, the group is working to obtain the ISO 14001 Eco-certification for environmental management. Since 2006, the Acta Vista group continues its development across the areas of heritage and the environment and works together with European specialists in Heritage and training in order to establish the « European Conservatory of Traditional and Innovative Techniques for Heritage ». From 2009, this conservatory aims to train professionals working in building from all countries on the traditional techniques to be used to respect the environment and to introduce them to social entrepreneurship so that they in turn can become the ambassadors and activists of sustainable development. Working to respect the environment, balancing the economic factors with social progress, Acta Vista has become a reference in the domain of sustainable development. The Entrepreneur Arnaud Castagnède is an engineer and cartographer by training. His life changed when he went to French Guyana in late 1987. There, he worked with Native Americans living on the Brazilian border. While in South America, his unusual career path also led him to pilot experimental training and environmental restoration programmes for gold-mining companies. His focus was enterprise and community development, but in this process he became a firm believer in the power of work to enable individuals to change their circumstances and their future. He returned to France ten years later and sought to deploy these development capacities in his native country. But once there, he found it challenging given the predominance of the State in all facets of employment. It took several years of trial and error in setting up a diverse array of enterprises before he succeeded in establishing Acta Vista. In that capacity, Castagnède has become an intermediary between the public and private sectors facilitating the re-entry of the unemployed into positions where they may profitably regain their dignity and independence through full time work.
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