Paris Saint-Germain and Au Tableau Productions are changing the way people look at autism
The French President went to Clamart on Tuesday 4 April to meet the neurotypical and autistic children who make up the Onze de légende team.
To mark Olympic and Paralympic Week in schools in 2023, which will be dedicated to inclusion, the young beneficiaries of the "Onze de légende" (Legendary Eleven) operation, which has been run since 2022 by the teams of the Paris Saint Germain Foundation, a non-profit organisation, and Au Tableau Productions, received an official visit from the French President, Emmanuel Macron, yesterday afternoon on the pitch in Clamart.
A pillar of the Paris Saint-Germain Foundation's disability programme, Onze de légende aims to promote inclusion and living together by enabling children with autism to participate fully in a sporting activity.
The Onze de légende is a team made up of children with autism and neuro-typical children, supervised by educators from the Paris Saint-Germain Foundation. Every Wednesday, young people aged 9 to 11 benefit from free training sessions without a licence. The aim is to enable each of them to take a step towards the other and, together, to overcome their difficulties in order to challenge the club's U9s (under 9s).
Through this programme, children supported by the IME and the Autisme sans frontière 92 charity can strengthen their social skills to overcome difficulties in communicating and interacting with others. The training session also allows the children to develop their coordination and physical skills and to improve their self-confidence.
The project was born out of a documentary directed by Thomas Raguet and produced by Caroline Delage (Au Tableau Productions) for Canal+. The film, which recounts the adventures of this extraordinary team, will be broadcast on Saturday 8 April at 19:00 on freeview on Canal+ and has been available on the myCanal platform since 30 November 2022.
Sport is a great tool for inclusion. Onze de légende has already changed the lives of many neurotypical and autistic children. This documentary also aims to change the way people look at sport.
Based on the values of team spirit, mutual aid and solidarity conveyed by football, this experience aims to improve these children's daily lives at school and at home, both by pushing them to overcome their social difficulties and by raising society's awareness of their disability.
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