Mobile learning, supporting the efforts of volunteers of the belle & bien association

As a partner of the belle & bien association, Teach on Mars is delighted to present to you the association and its work, and to unveil news about the association’s new digital training initiative for volunteers.

 

The belle & bien mission

For the last 21 years, the belle & bien association has worked in care facilities to provide group onco-aesthetic workshops for women affected by cancer, to restore their confidence and self-esteem. The pedagogical workshops teach self-care and makeup techniques.

With some 150 professional beauty volunteers, belle & bien operates France-wide, to improve lives and to enhance wellness.

34,000 women have already attended 9,919 belle & bien workshops.

 

 

The association is now faced with several challenges and must continue to expand its services to provide a high-quality response to a growing number of women from a myriad of backgrounds, all over metropolitan France and the French overseas territories.

The range of services on offer expanded half way through 2021 and continued in 2022, with home treatments, digital classes, out-of-hospital workshops and the inclusion of carers.

This expansion remains a priority for 2023, and will be consolidated by the introduction of new management tools and the continued implementation of a quality system.

To support volunteers’ efforts, on 4 April 2023, belle & bien launched a new training and digital communication application to broaden their expertise when it comes to supporting women affected by cancer.

 

Read the interview with Guillaume Adam, Executive Officer of belle & bien, who talks about this digital initiative

Why did you decide to use a digital training application?

The association has volunteers all over France. Their onboarding and training used to happen during a day-long course in Paris with 3 trainers (an oncologist, a psychologist and a socio-aesthetician). As our work expanded, this system became insufficient. It takes too long and is too constraining, in particular for volunteers from outside Paris.

We therefore decided to opt for a training and communication tool to help train volunteers more quickly, to communicate with them and to provide them with ongoing training. We needed a tool capable of bringing everyone together and forging a bond.

Is the new system in line with your work?

Today, new volunteers embark on a 4-stage onboarding pathway: the app lets them have an active role from the word go; they can access 4 training modules which they need to complete: joining the association, running a workshop, getting to know the products and running a class. In the toolboxes, they can access all the documents they need for their work. They can also consult information and discussions posted on the wall by other volunteers from their region.

This new system will make relationships more fluid and will spark discussions, enhancing management and team cohesion.

 

How did you build the governance of your digital project?

The association was supported by skills sponsorship and volunteering by digital training professionals. Claire Delouis from Clarins provided help, guidance, training and support right up to the deployment of our application. Teach on Mars wished to reach out and support us by providing us with their solutions.

Thanks to their support, we can now manage the app and we independently train and communicate with our teams of volunteers.

We also have the opportunity to produce new content in partnership with other sponsors in the future

Now that the app has been launched, what are the next steps? What would you like to achieve in the coming months?

The application was launched on 4 April and became accessible to our 154 volunteers. We are giving ourselves the time to support them, and to assess and adjust our system.

In parallel, we would like to start a new project, this time for our recipients. The aim is for all women affected by cancer, wherever they live, to benefit from a belle & bien service.

So Doux is the name of an immersive learning and discovery pathway about self-care during illness. It provides a digital, autonomous, immersive, fun and gratifying range of services.

We aim to launch the scheme in October 2023, in time for Pink October and we hope to reach some 2,000 women in 2024

 

 

Teach on Mars is pleased to have taken part in this wonderful digital training initiative for volunteers; a contribution it made alongside Clarins, and is proud to support the efforts of the belle & bien association as its partner.

For more information on the belle & bien association, you may download the  2022 annual report published in February 2023.
And if you would like to support the belle & bien project, you can make a donation here: https://www.bellebien.fr/faire-un-don/