"The Lacoste Foundation aims to give young people the means to live better and fulfil their potential through sport" – Axel Carrée

Created in 2006 and housed at the Fondation de France from the outset, the Lacoste Foundation aims to promote the social and professional integration of young people through sport. Below is an interview with its director Axel Carrée.

How have the Lacoste Foundation's missions evolved since it was created in 2006?

The Lacoste Foundation is part of the legacy of René Lacoste, the brand's founder, who was always very sensitive to the issues of education and support for young people. When it was created, the Foundation's primary mission was to encourage the practice of sport, particularly golf and tennis, and to make it accessible to all. For example, with the association Sport dans la Ville, we created the "Balle de match" program to promote girls' access to tennis. We very quickly realised that the associations we supported saw sport as a real tool for education and inclusion. This conviction is at the heart of what we do today: we want to give young people the means to live better lives and fulfil their potential through sport. To achieve this, we place a priority on the joint development of specific projects and programs with the associations, with a long-term perspective.

Why do you think sport is such a powerful tool for promoting equal opportunities and uncovering potential and talent?

Physical activity and sport are powerful tools to help young people in vulnerable situations, whether academic, economic, and/or family-related, to get back on the road to self-fulfilment and success. Because of its fun and engaging nature, sports don’t feel like a chore and are easily enjoyed. It therefore enables multiple forms of learning that go far beyond the sport itself: awareness of one's abilities, appreciation of effort, respect for rules and teammates, etc. The coach plays an important role: by encouraging them and helping them to progress, he helps young people who have had setbacks to rebuild a relationship of trust with adults that has often been broken before. The acceptance found in sporting environments can help young people who have dropped out of school, for example, to find their way back to school and get back on a positive learning track.

How do you choose which projects to support? Can you give a few examples?

The associations we support are aligned with one or more of the Lacoste Foundation's four main areas of action: encouraging physical activity and sport; promoting access to sport for everyone, particularly girls and people with disabilities; promoting education through sport; and helping young people into employment.

For example, for the last two years we've been supporting the Moroccan association TIBU, which encourages young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to take up sport. In addition to the sports sessions it offers, its goal is to help young people who have left the school system without any qualifications to find training and employment, particularly in the sports professions: sports coaches, sports hall managers, specialist shop assistants, etc. We have supported TIBU in renovating a multi-sports pitch in the suburbs of Casablanca, which was unveiled in May. To mark the occasion, we invited Selima Sfar, a former Tunisian international tennis player and member of the foundation's executive committee, to come and meet the young people supported by the association, to share her experience as a top-level athlete who has now become a sports journalist. As well as providing financial support to associations, we want to act as a catalyst for dialogue and inspiring encounters for young people.

In another example, for the last three years we've been supporting a paragolf project run by the Paris Ile-de-France Golf League. It enables people with physical disabilities to learn to play golf alongside able-bodied people. Initially developed on the Maisons-Laffitte golf course, the project now includes 10 golf courses in the Ile-de-France region, and soon 18. The eventual aim is to roll it out across the Hauts-de-France region too.

One of the special features of the Lacoste Foundation is that it involves not only the staff but also the company's partners such as suppliers and distributors in the countries where it operates. What is the thinking behind this? 

We want to bring together as many resources as possible, both financial and human, to support the Foundation's work in the public interest. This is accomplished with our own staff, but also our economic and industrial partners. For example, we've set up the "self-confidence" mentoring program so that employees who wish to do so can share their experience and skills with the young people assisted by the associations we support. The results have been very positive: nearly 150 employees in 11 different countries have signed up to the program since it was launched in 2022. In addition, in the projects we support locally, we mobilise our partners to strengthen the impact of our efforts in local communities. In Morocco, for example, our regional distributor has joined us in supporting the TIBU association.

Since its inception, the Lacoste Foundation has supported nearly 300 projects, run by 50 associations in 25 countries, benefiting more than 100,000 young people, 50% of whom are girls and women. What are your goals for the coming years?

Lots of initiatives have been launched in recent years to use sport in the service of the public good, but we're convinced that the scope of this theme can be even wider. To achieve this, we need to encourage collective action by bringing together all the players working in this field. As well as strengthening our social missions, this is one of our main goals for the coming years. Support for the production of David Blough's documentary XXI - Le Sport des Solutions is a good example of the collective approach we want to develop: an alliance has been set up between several philanthropic stakeholders, including Fondation de France, the Lacoste Foundation, and public institutions.

Another of our strategic goals for the coming years is to develop research into the initiatives we support. By producing objective knowledge about these initiatives and proving that they work, they can be more easily replicated by other stakeholders. This is a key aspect in strengthening the societal impact of sport.

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