Steph Deschamps / November 12, 2021
The American actor Forest Whitaker will invest to help young people in a department of the Paris region, the poorest in France, to train in techniques of conflict resolution and entrepreneurship, learned Thursday from his NGO, on the sidelines of the Paris Forum on Peace.
Unesco Special Envoy for Peace and Reconciliation since 2014, Forest Whitaker is also the founder and president of the Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative (WPDI), an NGO created in 2012 that invests in educational projects for young people living in regions affected by violence or conflict (South Sudan, Uganda, Mexico, the United States, South Africa) and now in France.
It was during a trip to the French capital, where the NGO has its headquarters, last spring that the Oscar-winning actor for The Last King of Scotland decided to invest in the Seine-Saint-Denis department.
The 60-year-old African-American actor was indeed marked during a visit by the poverty prevailing in the Chêne Pointu neighborhood in Clichy-sous-Bois, explained a spokesman for the WPDI.
The NGO, in partnership with the BNP Paribas bank, will engage in training young people in mediation to resolve conflicts and reduce violence with institutional actors and in training for future jobs as well as for setting up a business.
Forest Whitaker considers that the young person is not a problem, but a solution to his own problems, according to the spokesperson.
The NGO works in this sense in the poor neighborhoods of Los Angeles, where the actor grew up, and will transpose the model to New York.