Blog BNP Paribas | The bank for a changing world

Two interviews with the AJAHM association

The AJAHM association (Association of Young Adults with Motor Disabilities) is attached to the Centre d’Hérauritz in Ustaritz in Spain’s Basque Country. It welcomes people with motor disabilities, both with and without associated disorders, and brings together the parents of the residents. [...]

What are you doing on September 26th?

On Sunday, 26 September, like every other year, the many members of the Vaincre la Mucoviscidose (“Beating Cystic Fibrosis”) Association are holding the Virade de l’Espoir (“Challenge for Hope”) events throughout France to raise funds for the fight against cystic fibrosis.
I volunteer my time to assist with the Vaincre la Mucoviscidose’s events, and in 2010 [...]

Story of a Helping Hand in Central America

Stéphanie Trottier is an employee in at BNP Paribas (Canada) in Montreal, and has just returned from a humanitarian mission to El Salvador. Stéphanie was sponsored by the “Coup de Pouce” (“Helping Hand”) programme in Canada, and has taken the time to tell us a little more about her experience in the heart of Central [...]

Mission: Microfinance in India

As an employee of BNP Paribas Fortis, I took a few months’ leave of absence to go to India. I was to assist the management of ESAF Microfinance and Investments (Private) Ltd. (EMFIL) in implementing their growth strategy and in establishing a social performance management system.
Based in Thrissur, in the state of Kerala, this microfinance [...]

Education and Health for Children in Vietnam

In September 1995, after 8 years of marriage and having received all the treatments that modern medicine could provide, my husband and I finally resolved to take a different path from the one we’d imagined and made the big decision to adopt a child. Today, we are the parents of two young boys, both from [...]

Calcutta, from the street to the school

They wander the streets of Calcutta in their millions, in search of a livelihood; millions of children who live in squats, in shacks, on sidewalks … the majority are immigrants, clearly extremely poor, and are either orphans or have only one parent to support them.
Under these circumstances, where drug trafficking and sexual abuse are [...]

My discovery of Lebanon with the OffreJoie Association

I had the tremendous good luck to get to know Lebanon and the Lebanese culture thanks to some close friends and especially to one of my best friends, who chose to settle in Beirut in 2006, just before the outbreak of war the following summer.
Under the spell of what she told me about the country, [...]

Can Opera educate our children?

Since the dawn of time, parents have told their children fairy tales, stories of the past and stories drawn from the imagination, which help children to develop a moral compass, a set of values, an identity and a sense of context and relationships, which enable them to imagine their own futures.

The Opera, presented as tales for children, provides an ideal transition between the end of a stage during which children can dream of imaginary princes and princesses, in a rose-tinted world where Santa Claus and his reindeer live, and the time of disillusionment … [...]

Children act up with Piccolo Opera

Thanks to the BNP Paribas Foundation’s Coup de Pouce (Helping Hand) program, a young boy, 8 years old, has been attending the opera school for two years with diligence and great motivation. He’s a “man” of the theatre: he enjoys playing “Falstaff” by Verdi, who, hidden in a basket of dirty laundry to escape the [...]