Charles-Olivier Guido, the lawyer for lost cases
The Clichés project was born out of a desire. That of a French Red Cross employee - Sophie Alex-Bacquer - who wanted to show the faces of the employees, volunteers and students of this association. Far from the stereotypical image of hero or heroine, she wants to honour all those ‘everyday’ people who have invested, for years, in the social sector or, more recently, in the field during the Covid-19 crisis. In recent weeks, we have wanted to work alongside to make the voices, often discreet, of those who strongly wear the Red Cross and strengthen the French social fibre.
The first voice of this podcast is the one of Charles-Olivier Guide. At the age of 52, he is in retraining to become a life helper, or in the French Red Cross jargon, a family helper, “I thought to myself “this is a nice job. We are in contact with people. We enter into their intimacy… And from there, I went to an information meeting organized by Pole Emploi in Bordeaux with the French Red Cross and I said to myself “yes, that’s what I want to do” (9’48).
For more than thirty years, Charles-Olivier Guido has worked in the social field. A vocation that emerged when he was only twelve years old : he was an indirect witness to the suicide of a student in his class. “That day, I really clicked. I said to myself, I said to my parents, I said to my grandparents, I said to everyone (Later, I will help people who have problems''. (4’03) Since then, despite the difficulty and precariousness of his mission, he has worked for others and has become a sign language mediator.
During the Covid-19 crisis, it was unthinkable for him to stay at home, without helping the people who needed it: “We’re kind of the outward link. And that too must be considered because there are people who have found themselves completely isolated overnight” (12’16). Among the beneficiaries the accompanies, there is a deaf man whom he sees every Monday, and who without the help of Charles-Olivier Guido would be even more alone and disinformed : “The big problem is that the news except in the morning on a channel where it is sign, the newspaper of 13h and 20h unfortunately is not signed. So it’s kind of hard for him to understand. And this is a gentleman, who doesn’t have internet at all, who doesn’t have a computer, so he can’t even go on the web to be informed.’ (14’12)
Behind the doctors, the nurses, the cashiers, there is also every men and women, employees, volunteers and students who are present to help those in need who are not ill with Covid-19