The Tocqueville Challenge
Empowering Student Engagement in Humanitarian Action
The Tocqueville Challenge is a student competition designed to foster engagement in the non-profit sector by connecting students with mentors from the business world and representatives of civil society organizations. Together, they co-develop projects that serve the common good.
This innovative and hands-on initiative offers students a unique, professionalizing experience that is both philanthropic and impactful.
Rooted in co-construction, the program harnesses the Millennial generation’s appetite for engagement. It emphasizes collective intelligence and diverse perspectives to address real-world humanitarian issues.
Over a short, intensive period, student teams work with professional mentors to design or develop a socially impactful project. The Challenge culminates in a final pitch to a jury, where the most promising projects receive financial support for implementation over the following year.
Beyond the competition, participants gain valuable experience working across sectors, build both technical and soft skills, and contribute meaningfully to civil society through collaboration and innovation.
INFO
The winner of the last edition
L’ambitieuse- 2023
A project developed by students at the Ecole Normale Supérieure
A project created by the students with their mentor from Créé Ton Avenir, to take action in French lower and upper secondary schools and encourage students to choose a career path.
To remedy the lack of educational ambition in disadvantaged areas – highlighted by scientific literature and confirmed by the experience and expertise of the association’s members in the field – L’Ambitieuse proposes to work on the notion of ambition with young people and to refocus on the psychology and awareness of young people on the subject. The aim is to democratise ambition and make it a right for every student.
L’Ambitieuse wants to encourage young people to adopt a new attitude: Anglo-Saxon ambition! Indeed, the first definition of ambition in the Cambridge Dictionary is: “strong wish to achieve something”. So this is a task that needs to be carried out with and for young people.
LES RHIZ'HOMES - 2022
A project led by Sciences Po students
“Les Rhiz’homes” is an association project whose aim is to create shared spaces that facilitate encounters between young people and the elderly, who, together with volunteers, are invited to create, lead or participate in activities and events. Refusing to relegate the elderly to a situation of dependence and vulnerability, “Les Rhiz’homes” wishes to provide a framework for a balanced, reciprocal and dynamic relationship between young and old. We therefore call on the elderly and young people to become a force of proposal, by inviting them to lead workshops based on their skills, knowledge and passions! These workshops are based on three principles:
1. The activity is voluntary: it is based on a desire expressed by the older person or the young person. Each participant can therefore find his or her place!
2. The transmission takes place in both directions. Each person can take turns to be the driving force behind an activity.
3. The activities take place in a dedicated third place, which the participants can make their own in order to make it a real place of sharing and conviviality.
