Kylian Mbappé: the generous scorer | The echoes

You don't have to be a multinational or a Silicon Valley billionaire to start a foundation. Kylian Mbappé proves it. At almost 23 years old, the Paris Saint-Germain prodigy has decided to start giving back to others a part of what he has earned by launching what is for the moment only an association called "Inspired by KM”.

And this young man in a hurry, doing nothing like the others, he has been mobilizing since January 2020 to allow 98 children to “live their dream” as he managed to live his. This figure of 98 owes nothing to chance since Kylian was born in 1998… and France won its first World Cup that year.

open doors

“Our goal is to reach out to children from diverse backgrounds. To make them meet. To help them progress. And finally to open doors for them, to give them a helping hand to enable them to one day do what they dreamed of doing,” explains Fayza Lamari, Kylian’s mother, who played a leading role in the creation of this association which she runs with one of her eldest son's aunts. “The idea came to us the day after the World Cup won in Russia. Kylian had made the cover of "Time" magazine and I told him that he had to put his notoriety at the service of a cause", recalls the mother of Bondy's crack who, by supervising his son from his most young age, helped him to keep his feet on the ground and to prevent him from behaving like a spoiled child.

The association has selected as many girls as boys, coming from all social backgrounds but with a majority of disadvantaged young people. Half of them are also from Bondy but sport is not their link. Some want to become a doctor, a painter, an actor, a saxophonist... "Only two want to be footballers", explains Fayza, who will accompany the children until they enter working life, before, perhaps, one day creating a more permanent school.

98 stars

So that the children learn that diversity is a richness, the association set up integration weekends and sent the young people off together on vacation last summer, before going back to skiing in February. They can take tutoring classes at all times, with particular emphasis on language learning. Covid obliges, many activities are held by Zoom interposed. Video meetings to which Kylian has invited himself several times.

In the long term, a physical place should make it possible to accommodate the "98 stars" but in the meantime the Courrèges workshops purchased in Neuilly cannot receive so many people. The young people therefore meet in premises made available by the Accor group, a major sponsor of PSG.

The operating budget is over one million euros, and will increase when travel can resume. It is financed by Kylian but also by its sponsors (Nike, Electronic Arts, Hublot, Dior and soon Oakley), who donate part of the contracts concluded with the footballer to the association. Some like Good Goût provide benefits in kind, helping to feed or educate children and their families on food.

Olympic Games 2024

The association does not give money directly to the children but can help to partially pay for a student room, for example.

Beyond these 98 young people who are now between 12 and 20 years old, the association will also multiply operations to reach several thousand other children. A special operation has just been launched to bring together by the 2024 Olympic Games more than 20,000 children who will participate in the co-creation of a work of art with the artist Rachel Marks, then exhibited at the Philharmonie de Paris: a tree reconstituted from leaves of books to educate young people to read and defend the environment.

intertitle

Read also:

History: the unfinished novel of PSG

Podcast: 50 years of PSG