"Becoming a Social Innovation Platform”

You are celebrating the first anniversary of the AXA Foundation for Human Progress. Over the past year, what have you learned most about today's vulnerabilities?

What is striking, first of all, is that awareness is growing, but still lags behind reality. We talk more about vulnerabilities – whether violence against children, mental health, or, more recently, violence in sports – but resources, solutions and implementation timelines remain far too limited compared to the scale of the needs.

We have also witnessed the crucial role played by grassroots actors. They are the ones who, closest to the populations, identify early warning signs: “Les Déterminés”, for example, test appropriate responses to support disadvantaged populations on their path to employment and entrepreneurship; the “Fondation du Patrimoine” adapts restoration and preservation schemes to local realities... They carry the most innovative and relevant solutions, but often lack resources, networks, and long-term support to trial these solutions and scale them. This is why we prioritize, whenever possible, multi‑year support, as we do with the national Manufactures, whom we support for five years.

All of this is playing out in a challenging economic and political environment – budgetary pressures, ideological tensions, polarization – which slows the implementation of ambitious public policies and exacerbates fragmentation. Finally, we see how deeply interconnected vulnerabilities are. Biodiversity loss affects first and foremost the most disadvantaged populations, with a direct impact on their physical and mental health. Economic hardship, social isolation and mental health issues accumulate and create genuine vicious circles. The Fund has taught us that we must look at these situations in all their complexity, and not in silos.

How does the Foundation concretely help strengthen social cohesion and protect the most vulnerable?

We have chosen a transdisciplinary approach. The vulnerabilities we focus on never belong to a single field: they are social, psychological, economic and environmental. The Foundation therefore favours projects that combine disciplines and bring together multiple categories of actors: NGOs, researchers, public authorities and sometimes businesses. The aim is to achieve a holistic understanding of the challenges before taking action. This is the purpose of the latest chair program we have just launched, which seeks to build open science for and with all, by involving decision‑makers and experts alongside scientists.

Understanding before acting means organizing dialogue between stakeholders, documenting situations, and relying as much on science as on the experience of field professionals. Action will be all the more effective when it is grounded in a sound understanding of real needs.

Can you highlight one or two project that illustrate its mission?

Our initiatives for the ocean, for instance, build on scientific research – whether Tara, which mobilizes decision‑makers and shares knowledge with emerging countries, or IPOS (International Platform for Ocean Sustainability), a low‑carbon AI tool that helps States access the most advanced marine knowledge to make informed decisions on ocean sustainability.

This same requirement for understanding underpins our actions that are most directly geared towards inclusion and “living better together” for the most vulnerable populations. We remain firmly committed to supporting women affected by domestic violence, a cause AXA has championed for years. At the same time, we are now extending our action to protect children, launching dedicated initiatives to support young victims of violence. We support, for example, the creation of support centers for young victims of violence, where psychological support, confidence building, social follow‑up and reintegration are addressed simultaneously. After Paris, a second Asterya center for children under child protection is opening in Bordeaux. Since May, 13 new innovative projects in France, Colombia and Spain have benefited from our support following the first phase of our program to combat violence against children – leading actors dedicated to tackling incest, violence in schools or sports, and cyberbullying.

We also fund support programs for grassroots organizations working with marginalized populations. These programs combine mediation, social support, group activities and stronger ties between residents to rebuild social cohesion and fight exclusion. With its incubation programs, “Positiv” helps young talents gain confidence, develop skills and networks, and build their businesses from end to end, turning their potential into tangible success.

In all these cases, the role of the Fund is not to substitute itself for existing actors, but to give them the means to do more, better, and sometimes differently - and to scale up solutions that prove effective, for greater societal impact.

What will be the Foundation's main priorities for the coming years, and how do you intend to amplify its impact?

Our priority is to continue innovating and shedding light on the transformations underway in our societies, by mobilizing and energizing our communities.
We will strengthen our partnership‑based, transdisciplinary approach: working even more closely with local actors, scientists, NGOs, public and private institutions; testing participatory methods that co‑design solutions with the populations concerned; making greater use of data to better target our interventions and measure the impact of supported projects.

Carrying out preventive action, helping to strengthen the resilience of communities: these are the types of initiatives at the heart of our development strategy. It is not only about supporting those who are already in severe difficulty, but also about limiting entry into vulnerability: improving detection, intervening earlier, and equipping individuals and communities to face future shocks.

To amplify the impact of our action, we want to more widely disseminate good practices arising from the projects we fund, identify the most promising solutions and support their scale‑up, and create genuine networks of committed actors around a few key issues: child protection, mental health, social cohesion and intergenerational transmission, for example.

Ultimately, our ambition is clear: to turn the AXA Foundation for Human Progress into a social innovation platform – a place where energies, ideas and resources meet to deliver more effective and more sustainable responses to the vulnerabilities of today and tomorrow. And to become an architect of solutions, enabling a systemic response to major social cohesion challenges, leaving no one behind.