 The Association Pour Que l’Esprit Vive (Let the Spirit Live) was created in 1932.
Its founder, Armand Marquiset (1900-1981), was a twentieth-century pioneer in the development of charitable foundations in France. He played a leadership role in bringing to public awareness a large spectrum of social problems and elaborated a number of approaches to solve them. A man of vision and action, he also created a number of charitable and philanthropic organizations:
— Les petits frères des Pauvres (The Little Brothers of the Poor) in 1946, whose work is mostly devoted to the elderly.
— Frères des Hommes (Brothers of Humanity) in 1965, an association for developing nations.
— Les Frères du Ciel et de la terre (Brothers of Heaven and earth) in 1968, for isolated people.
His mark remains linked to his belief that each human being has a unique and irreplaceable value, as well as the revolutionary practice of assistance translated by his own formula: "flowers before bread".
The formal purpose of Pour Que l'Esprit Vive, formulated when the Association was created during the economic and social context of the great crisis of the 1930's, was to help artists and intellectuals many of whom were living in precarious conditions and often close to destitution.
From 1932 to the Second World War, Armand Marquiset, who had just voluntarily renounced a career as a composer and pianist, provided financial help for artistic creation and at the same time supported artistic creation by organizing concerts, exhibitions, and prizes for excellence.
By 1936 Pour Que l’Esprit Vive was recognized by the French Republic as a non-profit charitable organization.
After the effective departure of Armand Marquiset in 1946, the activity of Pour Que l’Esprit Vive was, for some four decades, essentially focused on a personalized type of assistance, the need for which has unfortunately always been felt.
Since the end of the 80s, the Pour Que l’Esprit Vive Association decided that its primary purpose was to help artists in the accomplishment of their vocation, to publicize and preserve their work.
Having chosen a humanist as well as humanitarian orientation, the Association assumed as its mission to promote the awareness of social problems and to contribute to their resolution through art and culture.
Pour Que l’Esprit Vive has also taken the initiative of collecting elderly people's memoirs, which are preserved in the Library of Autobiographies at La Prée.
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 28 December 2011 16:56 |
