The association Les Matelots de la Vie is one of our favorite beneficiaries of the Vivendi Create Joy program. Every year, young adolescents in remission from serious illness set sail on a 3-week maritime expedition on board a yacht, get used to life outside a hospital again and share their adventures with young people who are still hospitalized to give them hope and encouragement.

The beneficiaries all have in common having spent many weeks, months or sometimes even years in hospital. Imagine what that involves: losing contact with one’s circle of friends, falling behind at school, anxiety, fear of the illness, psychological suffering due to isolation, physical suffering due to the treatment, different family relationships, the attitude of other people, changing from compassion to boredom… Adolescents have to grow up quickly. The young people going aboard all have an underlying suffering, but their amazing and powerful desire for life heals the wounds from the hospital.

The relatively long three-week trip in a restricted and enclosed environment allows these young people to get to know each other and forge extraordinary friendships. Their adventure is a uniquely human one, reconstructing their lives, learning to live together again and regaining their self-confidence, while at the same time gaining a genuine understanding of each other since all have lived through the same kind of experience, of illness. They are not alone, since others have been through the same ordeal, asked the same questions, and had the same doubts. This is reassuring and gives them the energy to forge ahead.

Their families, which have lived through anxiety, denial, and fear of the hospital environment, also learn to rebuild, to regain their confidence in life, and to detach themselves from the young person of whom they have been so protective.

Finally, an integral part of this adventure is the constant connection between the boat and the hospitals. The young sailors take their role as messengers of hope for hospitalized young people very seriously. They share their route, their discoveries, their adventures and their encounters using specially created video and digital content to entertain hospitalized children and above all, to send them a message: “Fight your illness. You can win. I am one of the sailors of life today, but tomorrow it will be your turn”…

Finally, the hospital staff encourage the project. Everyone from nurses to professors is interested in the sailors’ riddles and adventures. Their families also take part in the games and in the videos, which contributes to creating a connection between the staff, the child patient and the families. This is a positive and joyous connection, far from the results of analyses and medical protocols…

 

Vivendi Create Joy has been completely won over by this project. The content created by the Sailors of Life (films, anecdotes, songs and video messages) and shared with the young hospital patients, sends them a message of hope and of life. 


kitd.html5loader(“flash_kplayer_ebe6b8b1c2cs”,”http://api.kewego.com/video/getHTML5Thumbnail/?playerKey=f45bcd3f83ac&sig=ebe6b8b1c2cs”);