Throughout the winter, the Car Podium association, based in Lille, in the north of France, organizes the “Fête du slip”, a major operation to collect new underwear for homeless people. Laurence Théault attended a concert evening in an associative bar in Lille.
The “slip party”, a funny expression for a cause that is not: the great precariousness. To attend the concert organized by the association car podium, you have to put a new underwear in the big cardboard boxes located at the entrance of the bar. And if you forget, boxers and panties stamped “Fête du slip” are sold for six euros each.
Newsboy cap on the head and Doc Martens on the feet, Charlyse Bouchard is a member of the association. She explains why collecting underwear for the homeless is a necessity: “ In all the collections, generally, we forget the underwear. We collect a lot of second-hand clothes. People, out of decency, for the sake of intimacy, never give underwear and suddenly, it’s a real lack for all the maraudes, all the accommodation centers which do not necessarily have a budget either to be able to buy new and to be able to give to people who need it. »
Because podium aims this year to obtain 1,000. To achieve this, the association installs cardboard ballot boxes in various places in the metropolis, bars, universities, district town halls or even social centres. The underwear is then sorted and offered to associations, including the Samu social, which help the poorest.
It is a big guy with a generous smile, Ludovic Houttemane, who is co-organizing this fundraising evening. He explains that if people don’t dare to give, the poorest don’t dare to ask: ” It affects hygiene, and that’s why it’s not easy to claim this need. There, it could be expressed by people who accompany them, who are in contact with them on a daily basis. We don’t think about it, it’s silly, but yes, obviously there is this need. »
A matter of health
This question concerns dignity, but also health. The doctors say it: the main enemy of the homeless is neither the cold nor bad food, but the lack of hygiene which causes many illnesses.
Small, tangled hair and beard, Laurent is homeless. It was posters that alerted him to the “Festival of slips”: ” I saw the poster a week ago, that’s why I came today. I’ll go see, but I’ll be a little embarrassed. » A homeless person, he says, can sometimes keep the same underwear ” a month, sometimes a month and a half ». ” I know a guy, pedestrian street, he always has the same. The problem is that it smells bad. »
These young people who came for the event understand the difficulty of staying clean when you are in the street: ” They may not necessarily have access to the washing machine so easily. And then in the street, you have to dry them, it’s a real hassle in real life. Laundromats are expensive. » ” And that de-dramatizes the subject too. The party of the underpants, here it is, it’s funny. » « And then everyone is wearing underpants. Minister, not minister, worker… Briefs are universal. »
We find Laurent, very happy with the boxer that was offered to him. He chose the color, blue, his favorite… The concert can therefore begin.
► The next concert to support this cause will take place on April 1st.