How the Lacoste Foundation helps young people with social and professional integration

Elegance is not only about the purity of a backhand in tennis or the perfect cut of a polo shirt, both of which are characteristic of Lacoste.

This endless quest for elegance, which was so dear to the founder René Lacoste, is also found in the work Lacoste does through its Foundation. More specifically, it supports young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Founded 18 years ago, its main charitable aim is to help young people with social and professional integration through sport, a legitimate integration in the eyes of René Lacoste, who was very committed to young people at the time. The brand has continued to pursue this vision throughout the years without ever faltering.

This profound belief rests on one clear observation: sport can be a powerful lever for social and professional integration for young people and it should help them reach their full potential.

The Foundation’s goal is to allow these young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to rediscover their confidence and guide them on the path to success whatever troubles (family, school, economic, physical) they may have faced in the past.

For the brand it was essential to remind people, throughout all of the Foundation’s actions, that sport is not only about performance and marketing. It is also, through daily practice, a structure that connects the most disadvantaged. With this in mind the Lacoste Foundation determined the four pillars of its commitment: encouraging physical activity, promoting sport for everyone, investing in education in general and promoting employability and access to the world of work.

The figures of this commitment speak for themselves: since 2006, the Foundation has supported close to 300 projects in 25 counties. More than 100,000 young people, half of them girls, have benefited from it. But sport needs to be accompanied by the teaching of essential values.

These are the same values that René Lacoste himself promoted: ‘confidence, tenacity, perseverance and rigour: with these tools, everyone can build their life’. It was these principles, combined with the pleasure of achieving his goals, that led to the creation of the Lacoste Foundation.

Driven by this desire to restore a taste for effort, the Foundation partly financed the documentary ‘XXI, le sport des solutions’.

Inspired by a book by David Blough, this documentary is an unprecedented immersion into emblematic initiatives in the domain of sport and social impact. Through the inspiring testimonies of beneficiaries, former athletes, teachers and association members, the documentary opens the field of possibilities for the place of sport in tomorrow’s world. ‘XXI, le sport des solutions’ offers a range of perspectives and experiences in a captivating journey lasting 70 minutes.

For the Lacoste Foundation, financing such a project was also a great opportunity to give visibility to those who help young people on a daily basis, shed light on inspiring initiatives and more generally promote education through sport to inspire others to get involved both publicly and privately.

A testimony to the Lacoste Foundation’s involvement, the documentary highlights the Gol de Letra, an association that it has supported for 15 years, and which allows 700 young people from favelas in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil to practise a sport and pursue an education, complete with access to professional training (sales, sports coaching, etc.)

Today, even if the importance of sport as a vector for integration has started to come into its own, there is still a lot to do, particularly concerning the most vulnerable.

More than ever before, the Lacoste Foundation is determined to push the boundaries of its moral and financial investment by developing the knowledge of these educational methods so that in the future other similar actions can be taken to better live together.