Colette Biot, humanitarian in rural areas
When you meet someone, one of the first question that is often asked is “Where are you from ?”. for some, this issue may be trivial or even annoying, but for others, it generates a sense of pride and allows the person to talk affectionately about the place where they lived. This is the case of Colette Biot, 78 years old. For the past eight years, she has held the reins of the itinerant Red cross on Wheels mission, which travels from villages in her native region, the Haute-Saône
As a professional photographer for 35 years, Colette Biot has always travelled the roads of her department to capture important moments in people’s lives, such as weddings, or family photos. In 2003, she retired and turned to drawing. But she soon realized that she missed human contact. “The photo, we shared with customers, but the drawing, I didn’t really have much to share, it was turned towards me. So I decided I needed to give my life some meaning. And at that time, I saw a notice in the daily press of the Haute-Saône that they were looking for volunteers at the Red Cross. So I said to myself “I’m going to introduce myself” (5’21). From the first meeting, she gets involved with the organization and becomes a volunteer.
She followed training courses and then became responsible for social action. In 2012, she set up the Red Cross on Wheels mission in her department. “We created a device that would meet people in precarious situations in rural areas. This story matched right away, it was absolutely a need in our department because we had fixed antennas; but in rural areas, there was nothing. There were a lot of villages far from everything where there was no possibility of intervention, the organism did not go there.” (7’58) This initiative, which aims to cover the widest possible area, also aims to break the isolation of residents from forgotten corners of the region.
In addition to food aid and clothing donations, Colette Biot wants to establish a climate of trust with residents, who may, according to her, be more reluctant to her plan “we have an important role in breaking the isolation in the countryside because we often deal with elderly people who live aloe, who are far from everything, who do not necessarily have family and who live in a very great loneliness, so going to them, it is breaking isolution, to bring them something of course, but also to guide them, to counsel them to benefit social assistance.” (14’03) As this team of volunteers arrived, they were able to create a support network in rural areas.
Far from retiring for the second time, Colette Biot does not see herself “living without the Red Cross.” She continues to travel from one village to another and she is pleased to be part of the Red Cross on Wheels program, which helps more than 130 families in 150 villages each week.