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Sunday, Jul 22, 2007
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National

A young Parisian’s dream project

Marie-Beatrice Gauthiez

He seeks to help underprivileged youth find new opportunities on Chennai’s food scene

— Photo: K. Pichumani

Sharing expertise: Alexis de Ducla (left), with some apprentices at La Boulangerie in Chennai.

CHENNAI: A year ago Alexis de Ducla, a young Frenchman from Paris, helped start La Boulangerie in Anna Nagar West, Chennai. It is a non-governmental organisation that offers training in pastry production and bakery management to young people from an economically disadvantaged background from the deprived areas of the city and beyond.

Every day a team of 24 hard-working young people knead, mix and cook croissants, breads, madeleines and other delicacies here. The crispy breads and the fine tarts go to restaurants such as the Park, Amethyst, Chamiers, and to shops like “La Maison des Gourmets,” the Auroville Boutique and Amma Nana.

They undergo a two-year training course meant to give them a strong base in running a bakery. To be able to join, there is no need for them to have any set qualifications. Mr. Alexis and his partner, Antoine Soive, motivate the apprentices who are hired according to their level of poverty, thirst for knowledge and resolve to succeed.

The goal

The goal is to train them, lift them out of poverty and push them towards good jobs: one of the trainees recently joined the Park as an intern.

It represents a real opportunity for many of them. But it is not always easy. “After my first day at the bakery, I left. I was frightened by the French team and by the organisation. But I finally came back,” says Peter, one of the trainees. He comes from Dindigul. Ravi, the experienced executive master, says that “life in Chennai and their backgrounds don’t make their apprenticeship easy, but despite that they are doing a good job.”

From business school

Educated at ESSEC, a French business school, Mr. de Ducla is not just another idealistic social worker. His ideas are down-to-earth and he tries to apply them to help people while also making a profit out of the operation. “I am not here to change India but to play a role on a realistic scale,” he says. He seeks to identify himself with those he seeks to help.

Alexis was motivated to take up the project some six years ago after meeting Father Ceyrac, a Jesuit missionary who has been working to support children and people in distress in India for the past 60 years. At that time, Mr. de Ducla had no interest in India. He had skipped a lecture that Fr. Ceyrac gave in his school. But as fate would have it, after the lecture Fr. Ceyrac met Mr. de Ducla at a café and they started to talk. Before leaving, he told the young man: “Help me… Come to India.” Two weeks later, an association named Collectif India was created.

Over a six-year period, Mr. de Ducla visited India several times. He involved himself in many projects, including one in Madurai, but La Boulangerie is the one that best reflects its vision. For him, “savage capitalism” has wrought enough damage, and the answer should be ‘shared capitalism’ from which everyone – rich and poor – can profit. Mr. de Ducla decided to settle down in Chennai because Tamil Nadu was his favourite region in India and because the city was booming. It had many hotels but lacked a qualified workforce in certain fields of food science.

Mr. de Ducla talks about La Boulangerie as a test, an example that shows the big firms that this sort of project is viable and that helping the poor is not antithetical to making a profit.

Acknowledging that profit and interest are the driving forces of the economy, he says humanitarian and social organisations should not shy away from these. He suggests that instead they should adopt a realistic framework that values entrepreneurship.

What motivates him to pursue such an enterprise? “I want to have a coherent life,” responds Mr. de Ducla. “It seems awkward to me to be working on the one hand for a big group like Nike that will exploit workers and on the other hand to create a humanitarian association. Humanitarian work and business should be one.”

He now plans to open a café on the tranquil terrace of the bakery on 15th Main Road in Anna Nagar West, where customers will enjoy croissants, cakes and sandwiches. Then he would wish to open a second café.

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