Interview with David Poinard, Managing Director of the Veolia Foundation
On Monday 18 November, the Veolia foundation celebrated its 20th anniversary… 20 years, the age of youth… But for this atypical foundation, the only one of its kind in France, these twenty years have been those of a human adventure, of self-building to better unite project support and skills sponsorship, while optimising the Veolia group’s three core businesses (water, energy and waste management) in the service of others and the planet. During the evening, Antoine Frérot, Chairman of the Veolia Group and the Veolia Foundation, and other speakers addressed nearly two hundred guests, including Veoliaforce volunteers, humanitarian and institutional partners, and project leaders. For Défis Humanitaires, this anniversary is an opportunity to take stock and to recall the fundamentals of this foundation, which is now a key player in humanitarian aid, development, support for initiatives and the defence of the environment and biodiversity. Interview with David Poinard, CEO of the Veolia Foundation.
This interview is one of a series published with CartONG, Résonances Humanitaires (RH), INSO, Coordination Humanitaire et Développement (CHD), Première Urgence Internationale, Solidarités Internationale and the Crisis and Support Centre of the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs. There are more to come, notably with VOICE, the coordination of humanitarian NGOs with the European Commission and ECHO in Brussels.
- Hello David Poinard. Before going any further, could you tell us about the foundations of the Veolia Foundation in terms of its statutes and how it operates within the Veolia group?
The Veolia Foundation is a corporate foundation under the law of 23 July 1987. Beyond this legal aspect, we are a team of about ten people, supported by the Veolia group. We are the Veolia Group Employees’ Foundation. As the cornerstone of our action, they can be involved as project sponsors or Veoliaforce volunteers. In this way, they embody the Veolia Foundation’s two levers for action: financial support and skills sponsorship.
- More specifically, how is the Foundation governed?
The Board of Directors of the Veolia Foundation is made up of Veolia representatives and outside figures who bring us their perspective. It defines the Foundation’s strategic orientations and oversees its sound management. It approves commitments in excess of €150,000, while the Selection Committee examines other projects submitted to the Foundation.
- The Veolia Foundation was set up in 2004, partly on the initiative and commitment of Veolia employees. At the time, Veolia Waterforce, a humanitarian intervention structure in the field, was added to this ‘redistributing’ foundation. Under the impetus of Thierry Vandevelde, Managing Director of the Foundation at the time, it became Veoliaforce. Can you elaborate on this evolution-construction towards a unique foundation model, combining a redistribution component as a ‘project sponsor’ and a component as a field player?
Originally, there was a fairly traditional corporate foundation: employees could ask it to support charities, often local ones, in which they were involved in their spare time. When the Waterforce unit, renamed Veoliaforce, joined the Foundation, we gained a lever for action and changed our nature by adding an operational aspect to our actions. We have one specific feature: our actions are always carried out with partners. We work regularly with the French Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières and Solidarités International. And the United Nations
The Veolia Foundation has also joined the France humanitarian response team. When, just over a year ago, the Kakhovka dam was destroyed in Ukraine, leading to flooding and the displacement of populations, the Veolia Foundation took part in an operation led by the Crisis and Support Centre (CDCS) of the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs.
- From your point of view, what have been the main challenges and issues that the Veolia Foundation has had to take up or assume over the past twenty years, in order to respond synergistically to the various missions it has set itself: humanitarian emergencies and development, social reintegration, protection of the environment and biodiversity, research and training?
In twenty years, the Veolia Foundation has built bridges between worlds that did not speak to each other and opened doors between the private and public sectors. Today, one of its greatest successes is that these doors no longer exist. With every humanitarian disaster, exchanges are natural and fluid.
The Foundation has changed in nature, but it has also changed in dimension by being able to support projects over the long term. And I’m thinking of the Tara Ocean Foundation. The schooner Tara and the Veolia Foundation are a bet on trust, on our ability to understand the role of the ocean in regulating the climate, on a collective ambition. We have travelled thousands of miles across the seas following Tara. I believe we have helped to raise awareness of a Tara generation. The generation that turned 20 with the Tara Ocean Foundation last year, and with the Veolia Foundation this year.
- How many projects has the Veolia Foundation supported since it was set up in 2004, and how many skills sponsorship projects have it carried out?
The Veolia Foundation has supported more than 1,500 projects and carried out more than 200 skills sponsorship projects.
- The number of your partners, particularly humanitarian ones, is impressive: Médecins Sans Frontières, the Red Cross, Solidarités International, Première Urgence, Action contre la faim, etc. On a more institutional level, the Crisis and Support Centre of the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs…. There are also partnerships with the Norwegian Refugee Council, the Bioforce Institute and even UNICEF and UNHCR… How are these partnerships built, based on what criteria and on what occasions or initiatives? What common thread binds them together?
The common thread is the need for effectiveness. We want to be useful for the beneficiary populations. We need to be both reactive in the event of a humanitarian emergency and determined when addressing long-term issues, such as sanitation in refugee camps. To achieve this fluidity in our exchanges, we need to get to know each other and exchange ideas. With this in mind, in 2020 we set up the WASH (Water, Sanitation, Hygiene or EAH editor’s note) Humanitarian Workshops, a biennial event organised with the Partenariat Français pour l’Eau (PFE), which brings together a number of players in the sector to identify innovations, share feedback and, generally speaking, talk to each other. I believe we now have a well-established place in the sector as water and sanitation experts dedicated to the humanitarian sector. We keep coming back to this: our Veoliaforce volunteers are our added value.
- Veoliaforce, a field intervention structure that supports humanitarian NGOs with expertise specific to the Veolia group (water, energy and waste management), works with volunteers who are Veolia group employees made available during their working hours. How are applications and in-house technical training organised?
Each year we organise training for around thirty candidates for the Veoliaforce voluntary service. These employees, from all Veolia’s business lines, learn how to deploy Aquaforces, our mobile water purification units, and get to know our partners in the humanitarian sector, who are present during the training.
As you mentioned, Veoliaforce volunteers are employees of the group who go on mission during their working hours, with a hierarchy and colleagues who support the effort in their absence. When a Veoliaforce expert leaves, a whole team, in addition to the Foundation, is mobilised to make this possible.
- The Veolia Foundation is present or active in a great many countries, and the ‘map of projects’ is impressive. Can you give some concrete, recent and significant examples of interventions, particularly humanitarian, with your partners, on decisive issues, situations or challenges?
In recent months, we have been working in refugee and displaced persons camps in eastern Chad. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is facing one of the most massive humanitarian crises in the world today. It asked the Veolia Foundation to improve access to water in the 12 camps around Farchana. We provided continuous support for five weeks to audit and make recommendations.
In another example, this time with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), several Veoliaforce experts travelled to Goma, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, to support the NGO in improving access to drinking water in hospitals and camps for displaced persons.
And on a much more local level, in the Paris region, we are supporting a back-to-work project organised by Maison Solidarité Femmes 95 to help women who have suffered violence. Our projects and missions take us to places where humanity is under attack.
- To keep things practical and humanitarian, a simple question: when does Veoliaforce intervene?
It all starts with an exchange with a partner who, through their knowledge of the field, lets us know what type of intervention is needed. In a post-disaster context, it is the feedback that leads us to determine the human and material resources needed to restore access to water, for example. Does the area have fresh water sources? Is it necessary to treat brackish water? The answer will lead us to give priority to a particular Aquaforce [mobile drinking water treatment unit].
In a post-emergency humanitarian context, or even in a development project, you have to find the right moment to intervene in the most useful way possible. Depending on needs and the availability of our Veoliaforce experts, we structure the timetable for missions with our partners.
- Access to drinking water is already, and will become even more so, one of the decisive challenges of the 21st century… Does the fact that you are the foundation of a group that specialises, among other things, in water services give you a more global – we would say holistic – ‘intelligence’ of this challenge? And how does this intelligence enable you to put in place ‘tailor-made’ solutions on the ground (I’m also thinking of your adaptable and modular Aquaforces and Saniforces technical solutions)?
The challenge is to combine the business expertise available within the Group with our partners’ knowledge of the field. The Aquaforce RO, adapted to brackish water environments, was born out of the need, gradually identified, to be able to adapt to environments where fresh water is scarce. Saniforce, a low-carbon solution for treating faecal sludge in humanitarian contexts, was born out of field observations: when camps for displaced persons or refugees become permanent, the question of sanitation becomes a major public health and environmental issue.
- In addition to humanitarian and development work, the Veolia Foundation is also involved in social reintegration and the protection of the environment and biodiversity (the Tara missions you mentioned spring to mind). Can you explain how important these causes are to you, and how you link them to the Foundation’s other missions and to the Veolia Group’s core businesses?
Like Veolia, we want to be a player in the inevitable ecological transformation we have to go through. To be understood, embodied and activated, this transformation must be fair. This is a major challenge for our contemporary societies. By investing in social links and integration through economic activity, we want to ensure that no one is forgotten along the way.
As for the environment, the challenge is to live in harmony with nature, preserve resources and biodiversity, and limit climate change. In other words, our challenge is to ensure that the Earth remains habitable. The Foundation encourages actions that educate the public or raise awareness of eco-responsible behaviour. It also supports ambitious projects to understand and restore natural environments.
- Do you have any practical examples of training initiatives in one or more of the Foundation’s areas of activity that are particularly close to your heart?
Training is not one of the Veolia Foundation’s areas of activity as such, but it is one of the means we use to promote our action. We train Veoliaforce volunteers and, increasingly, we train the staff of humanitarian partners in the use of our solutions. We are involved with Bioforce, the French Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières. In the field, we train the staff of UN agencies to take over the production of drinking water.
- It will soon be 2025; what prospects do you see for the work of the Veolia Foundation in a world where humanitarian and development needs are exploding and conflicts are spreading? What challenges do you think the Foundation will have to meet, and how might it adapt its modus operandi or approach?
This year we’re moving up a gear, both in terms of human resources, by setting up a network of Veolia ambassadors to increase the impact of our action in the regions, and in terms of material resources, by setting up hubs where our Aquaforces will be pre-positioned so that they can be transported more quickly to where they’re needed. The idea is that, with our small team of less than ten people, we can leverage our resources to duplicate more easily, deploy more quickly and respond more effectively.
- More specifically, at a time when funding for humanitarian aid and development is falling and crossing the exponential curve of needs, do you think that foundations such as the Veolia Foundation have a greater role or responsibility to assume?
Our responsibility is that of the foundation of a group present in all essential services. We want to be able to respond whenever the need arises and our partners call on us.
- In conclusion, what would you like to say to your partners in projects and actions, and to our readers?
A big thank you, because without them, we wouldn’t be much of anything! By submitting projects to us, by calling on us in emergencies or for development, they push us to be better. They are the key to our effectiveness. I might as well tell you that we haven’t finished working together, because it’s necessary, because it’s useful. At 20, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you!
Interview by Pierre Brunet
Writer and humanitarian
David Poinard
Delegate General of the Veolia Foundation since April 2024, David Poinard is a hydrogeologist by training and holds a doctorate in urban hydrology from INSA Lyon. He has held a number of management positions at Veolia Water since 2001, and is also involved in Veolia Foundation operations as a Veoliaforce volunteer, working on development projects or in crisis situations (natural disasters and armed conflicts). He has also chaired the French Water Partnership (FWP) working group on ‘WASH in crisis and fragile contexts’ since 2020.
Veolia Foundation: Serving outreach and human development | Fondation Veolia
‘Thank you in advance for your support for the publication of Défis Humanitaires’.
Alain Boinet, Chairman of Défis Humanitaires.
Your donation is 66% tax-deductible.
I invite you to read these interviews and articles published in the edition :
- What are the challenges facing the humanitarian sector and what are the responses? An interview with Alain Boinet
- Financing EU humanitarian aid: limits and prospects. An article by Caroline Correia, advocacy assistant at VOICE
- Give a book as a Christmas or New Year gift