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Open for business

Abdellah Aboulharjan gets young French immigrants off the streets and helps turn them into entrepreneurs.

He and Senni have been presented with 250 projects in the past six years. Fifty of them were realized: shops, clothing companies, market booths, garages, home delivery services, restaurants, car-rental enterprises and so on. Jeunes Entrepreneurs’ approach is simple. Immigrants visit one of its offices, located in Mantes-la-Jolie, Paris, Gennevilliers and Trappes, armed with a good idea, or even without an idea. Either way, they’re asked numerous questions designed to determine their strengths and needs. If they have the right qualities, a business plan is drawn up and a strategy devised to enable them to realize their goals.

These budding entrepreneurs—many of whom are under 40—are mentored by people who are often of foreign origin themselves and who have their own businesses. These mentors are therefore aware of the problems facing startups, including discrimination. Lawyers and accountants from the network of Jeunes Entrepreneurs provide their services free of charge. The young businesspeople only have to pay once they start to make a profit.

Successful projects mean jobs, and not only for the project founder. Some projects have created work for as many as 30 people. Many of those jobs will go to young former troublemakers. Aboulharjan doesn’t think any of the young people who helped put his organization on the path to business success are hooligans. “Though, of course, it’s not impossible,” he says. “If I was still on the street, I would have joined in. These are ordinary kids, a little cynical maybe, but they’re not criminals. It’s important to help young people in the problem neighbourhoods, like myself at that time, find something meaningful to do, develop themselves, develop self-esteem. Entrepreneurship brings out the best in us—particularly the will to succeed, to have control over your fate, direct your own life.”

Aboulharjan visits neighbourhood schools to spread this message. Studies show that twice as many young people in France’s problem neighbourhoods want to become entrepreneurs compared to the national average. He feels this should be encouraged in a country where—according to a 2006 opinion poll of students—70 percent of young people between ages 13 and 25 would like to be civil servants. In early 2006, students organized mass demonstrations protesting a draft law that would have made it easier for firms to fire as well as hire new personnel under 30. Politicians and the business community believed the new law would create more jobs for young people—but students felt otherwise.

Mayors regularly beseech Aboulharjan to open offices in their suburbs; provincial authorities are prepared to act as guarantors for bank loans; millionaires make huge donations. Aboulharjan worked with a budget of $540,000 in 2007; the number is now up to $870,000. Two-thirds comes from the private sector, the rest from regional authorities. This year, offices are planned in Lyon, Bordeaux, Lille and Marseille. Aboulharjan has calculated that with 40 branch offices, he can serve all of the 700 problem neighbourhoods in France. In order to fully dedicate himself to the effort, he withdrew from medinashop.com last year and set up a national organization with Senni, Jeunes Entrepreneurs de France.

Meanwhile, he has also become the director of Business Angels des Cités (BAC), a venture capital fund established by Senni and a couple of major French companies. The fund has some 70 investors, including well-known names like Gérard Worms (Banque de Rothschild), Eric Rothschild (Domaines Barons de Rothschild vineyards), Claude Bébéar (AXA insurance) and Gonzague de Blignières (Barclays Bank). Investors must put in a minimum of $70,000 and investments are only made in promising enterprises that allow mentorship. BAC also wants to invest in Océane, but Branki wants to hold off for now.

BAC is looking for a stake in the company, Branki explains, and wants the money to go toward expansion: several more restaurants and possibly a health food shop. But Branki isn’t interested yet. “I want to focus on what we have for the first 12 to 18 months.” For Branki, there’s plenty of time to find more fish in Océane—and for Aboulharjan, plenty more entrepreneurs like Branki to help.

Peter van Dijk is the former Paris correspondent for the Dutch daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad.

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