Those who join Amassa Climb have gone through life-changing circumstances that drastically changed their lives. Together, they are transforming their troubles into triumphs, one climb at a time.
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00:00The fact of being able to feel fully human is to be able to feel capable of everything.
00:08It's the moments where people really go beyond themselves, they trust themselves.
00:13They go down and you feel that something has switched in them.
00:17And that's really the most... I don't even know how to describe it.
00:23You say to yourself, wow, it's really great what we're doing.
00:25My name is Romain and I help people who are in difficulty, who are fragile, to rebuild themselves through climbing.
00:33I'm Mathilde Becerra, I'm the founder of Amasa.
00:36For us, the most important thing at Amasa Climb is to be able to welcome our beneficiaries beyond their social definition and their social or personal problems.
00:59There can be people who are homeless, there can be people who are also refugees, who are in quite different situations.
01:09We welcome them as human beings in their own right.
01:13Through climbing, we allow them to find a sense of belonging, a sense of group.
01:20And we also allow them to practice the French language, which is also a good vector of integration here.
01:27That's also one of our vocations, to create social mix.
01:32I wanted to create Amasa Climb following a trip I made to Lebanon, within an association called Climb Aid,
01:45which itself helps people in difficulty, especially Syrian refugees.
01:51What pushed me to leave for Lebanon was that I finished my climbing career in competition on a burnout.
01:58I led my career as a high-level athlete for more than 10 years, with the intuition that there was something else to develop through climbing.
02:08I was very touched, it was very humanizing, this trip.
02:13And as soon as I returned, I knew I could do it here.
02:18From the moment I met Romain, I told him very quickly about the association.
02:29We give them classes in the gym at the beginning.
02:31We give classes to children who are taken care of by Children's Social Assistance.
02:37We give classes to people with disabilities.
02:45I wanted to join the association to find out if I could do a job in climbing,
02:55if I could work in the climbing world, despite my visual impairment.
03:07The icing on the cake is to bring them to climb the mountains, directly on the cliffs,
03:12so that they can discover this feeling of freedom, this feeling of accomplishment,
03:17that you only find when you are in the middle of the mountains and in nature.
03:25In front of yourself, if you can say, or in front of the wall.
03:28And you have to try to progress in your own way.
03:34Climbing was something I didn't know how to do.
03:37I felt like I was standing or sitting, and I said, no, I'm not sure.
03:44To see a regular presence for us is a factor of success and a feeling of well-being.
03:52You feel gratitude, you feel a desire, a will to practice, and a real pleasure.
04:04And that's true, for us, it's the best reward.
04:08We feel like we're doing what's right, what's good for us and for our beneficiaries.
04:13And just that feeling, it's very satisfying.
04:17We are constantly helping each other, giving each other advice, discussing on the mats,
04:24talking about our lives.
04:26In fact, it's just a way to connect with people.
04:32I think climbing still carries these values of collaboration, solidarity, help.
04:39These are values that we would like to see more and more widespread around us in our society.
04:45My relationship with climbing today is much more free, because there is no more pressure.
04:51And so, it's much more fun.
04:57It's so much stronger than a medal and reaching the top of a wall.
05:01The association, in the end, helped me as much as it helps the people we interact with.
05:08Because I have as much pleasure in supervising as she does in discovering climbing.
05:15What I dream of for the future would be a life in a more diversified, more inclusive, less clustered society.
05:24Where, precisely, this feeling of belonging to a minority would be much stronger.
05:31Even non-existent, that would be ideal.