Practice and teach French or English while connecting with our refugee community!

Whether you’re a volunteer or a beneficiary learning a new language, join us every week:

Wednesday: French language & culture

Thursday: English conversation & practice
🕖 Time: 19:00–21:00
📍 Location: IMPACT Café & Coworking, 67 rue Beaubourg, 75003, Paris

How it works:

1. Introduction (20–30 min): Each session starts with a short introduction led by a volunteer on the evening’s topic.
2. Conversation Practice (1 hr): Volunteers pair with beneficiaries in 1-on-1 or 2-on-2 groups for meaningful conversation.
3. Community Dinner (30 min): Share a meal with the group. STCP provides the main meal, and volunteers are welcome to bring small items like fruits, cookies, or a French baguette. Volunteers interested in cooking or celebrating special occasions are encouraged to contact the program coordinator.

Who can join:

• No teaching experience required!
• Volunteers with B1+ French are especially encouraged (beneficiaries’ levels: A0–C1).
• Patience, empathy, and a desire to connect are more important than language skills.

Getting Started:

• Attend a New Volunteer Training (first Tuesday of each month, ~1 hr) to learn best practices for volunteering with refugees.
• Register as a Serve The City Paris volunteer and complete the Volunteer Registration Form.
• A monthly €10 tax-deductible donation helps support our programs and volunteer activities.

Want to get even more involved?
Check out our S.A.V.E. program, where volunteers create and lead social impact projects in Paris—offered at no extra cost.

P.A.I.R. is a mentorship program by Serve the City Paris that supports the integration of asylum seekers, refugees, and newly arrived foreigners in Paris.

We connect newcomers with trained volunteers for one-to-one meetings focused on conversation, cultural orientation, and social connection. Together, they explore daily life in France, practice conversational French, and build confidence through meaningful exchange.

All volunteers receive training before joining the program to ensure respectful and supportive communication.

P.A.I.R. is not legal or housing support, it is human support, helping newcomers feel more connected and confident in their new environment.

For more information or to receive the volunteer training schedule, please contact:
info@servethecity.paris

The STCP “Journey to Paris Workshop” is an interactive workshop designed to provide an impactful service, to educate and deliver a powerful perspective about the refugee community, and to allow participants to comprehend their own life journeys and challenges we as humans face at all levels. The workshop and exercises opens up the minds of individuals to appreciate more, and reflect on, their own personal journeys or adventures in life, and the personal journeys or adventures of others.

The workshop can be customized to include a session where the group prepares lunch boxes for the refugee camps. There is also an option to deliver the lunch boxes to the homeless and refugees in Paris. Also, a presentation can be delivered by a refugee guest speaker and beneficiary of Serve the City Paris, who provides details on his or her personal journey. The story delivered by our refugee beneficiaries are always both educational and heartfelt.

Usually after the workshop, food preparation and/0r refugee presentation, the group participates in writing a note (in French, English or both) to be included in the lunch boxes for the refugees and homeless. The participants write a short inspiring or supportive note or a simple sentence ..i.e. ‘welcome to France’, ‘we support you’, ‘hang in there’, ‘stay strong’..etc. The cards in envelopes are placed in the lunch bags to be handed out to the refugees and homeless.

The ‘Journey to Paris’ workshop can take place in 2 hours, or up to 4 hours. For more information about the workshop, the facilitators and a more detailed breakdown of the schedule, please send a note to info@servethecity.paris.

For over 10 years, Serve the City International has been providing CSR activities and programs for large and small companies worldwide. In 2017, Serve the City Paris begin working with a team of senior consultants and select executives from European and U.S. corporations to create a specific workshop designed for high level managers and executives of corporations.

The result is our workshop for high level managers and executives is called “Success to Significance”.

“Success to Significance”  is an excellent opportunity for executives and senior managers to better understand one’s life purpose, to learn something new about themselves and others, and to better plan one’s future purpose.   Some of our key messages and take-aways in our Success to Significance workshop include:

• We learn about our own past, present and future definition of the three S’s…Success, Sacrifice & Significance.
• We learn why it’s important to “let go of the things we cannot keep, so that we can receive the things we can never lose’.
• We learn the importance of climbing the right ladder, and ensuring ‘our ladder is on the right wall’ as we grow older.
• We learn how important helping others is, whether it be with our executive teams, our own employees or in our society.

Our Success to Significance workshop is interactive and facilitated by two senior STCP consultants.  The workshop can be a part of an overall event that can be customized to fit in a schedule of 2 to 4 hours.  It can include a social impact activity such as making food boxes for the homeless, a presentation delivered by one of our refugee beneficiaries, or it can be conducted before or during a meal (dinner or lunch).

The flow and schedule breakdown for this workshop, resumes of the consultants who run the workshop, and a schedule of the entire event can be provided by sending an email to  info@servethecity.paris.

“The Success To Significance Workshop was an excellent and profound experience.   The objectives we had for the evening included giving people a greater appreciation of their own lives as well as giving them a good experience of how it feels to help those less fortunate than themselves. We achieved our objectives for sure”.

                           – Ian Martin, CEO & Group Head of Insurance, HSBC

The SAVE Member Program is designed for our international volunteers who wish to become more knowledgeable volunteers, and how to create social impact projects for Paris. By participating in a combination of Serve the City Paris unique volunteer activities, combined with SAVE workshops, events, special volunteer initiatives and social impact projects for Paris, volunteers build knowledge, credentials, empathy and other valuable virtues to be better volunteer and to help the city of Paris.

The SAVE program requires a certain number of hours of volunteering, a minimum number of workshops, and participation in a SAVE Capstone Project, where you engage with your fellow SAVE participants to create social impact.

The workshops cover different topics,  (humanitarian, diversity, integration, environmental, social entrepreneurships, and how to run an NGO. Most workshops are led by either a subject matter expert, or another S.A.V.E. program participant.  S.A.V.E. program participants are also trained on existing Serve The City volunteer Programs and a workshop on having a balanced lifestyle that includes the importance of volunteering while pursuing a career (…the Curious Question Workshop).

The SAVE program can also provide credentials for volunteers to use for creating a well rounded resume required for searching for work, to further one’s educational endeavors, or one’s personal aspirations. A Certificate of Benevolence is provided, along with Testimonial Letter, for the time dedicated to the SAVE program and volunteering with Serve the City Paris.

The main goal for SAVE is to offer those who want to make their volunteer experience more meaningful and more impactful. Perhaps also becoming a change agent in your own community.

__________

If you are already a Serve The City Paris volunteer, there is no extra cost to participate in the SAVE Program.  To participate in SAVE, we do ask that you fill out the SAVE registration form, and donate 10 Euros a month to participate in Serve The City Paris organized volunteer activities. This donation is a tax deductible donation, which goes towards the STCP humanitarian projects for our refugees the homeless and marginalized in Paris.

To learn more about the S.A.V.E. Program, please CLICK HERE

Serve the City offers at least one fun, educational, entertaining, or purposeful event each month for our volunteers and our beneficiaries.

Each monthly event is designed to support integration of foreigners in France, and to build a stronger community of expats and immigrants who have made Paris their home.

Examples of our events might include “Mic Nights”, a Barista Café tasting, Game Night, Candle Light Yoga, Welcome Dinners, holiday events, or movie night in our conference room downstairs.

Events are always held at the IMPACT Café & Coworking, located at 67 Rue Beaubourg, 75003.

We also hold events in the field such as a picnic or fan support for our STCP Football team, who plays each Wednesday nights and Sunday afternoons against other football teams in Paris.

For events, offered each month, please see our events calendar, or download our Serve The City Paris ServeNow application HERE

WHY:  We all know how areas of Paris need our help with trash pickup. Cleaning Paris is one way to impact the environment in a positive manner.

On Saturdays, groups of volunteers will go out with brooms in hand, to clean up a location in our city, either Paris Gares (Gare Austerlitz, Gare de Lyon, or Gare St. Lazare), or at major metro stations such as Place Republique, Place St. Michel, Bastille, or Place Nation.

If you wish to help clean our great city of Paris, STCP will provide the brooms, gloves, garbage bags and hand sanitizer

WHERE:   Volunteers meet on Tuesday, Friday and Saturdays for this activity and others, starting at 9:30am (10am on Saturdays), at IMPACT Café & Coworking (67 rue Beaubourg, 75003 Paris).  The activities we offer, usually last 2-3 hours maximum.

WHAT:  You have the option of going out with a group of volunteers to ‘Sweep The City’, or you can join our Food and hygiene product distribution.

REQUIREMENTS:
To become a Serve the City Paris Volunteer, please fill out a (mandatory) Volunteer Registration Form HERE

Once you fill out the form, there is a monthly €10 Euro donation required to participate in STCP volunteer activities.  This €10 euro donation is a tax deductible donation and it goes towards our expenses for our programs for the marginalized in Paris, and our volunteer activities at Serve The City Paris.

We also ask all our new volunteers to consider taking one of our ‘new volunteer training’ workshops.   The new volunteer workshops are usually offered 2x per month, in the evenings for 45 minutes.   They are always online using Zoom and usually very interactive where volunteers can ask questions about volunteering with Serve The City Paris.

You might also consider joining the STCP SAVE program, which offers volunteering on special projects, training and weekly workshops that offer a combination of theory and practice around social impact, to ensure more impactful and meaningful volunteer experiences for our volunteers.  A S.A.V.E. application must be completed. The S.A.V.E. application can be filled out at this link HERE. 

Please remember to register for this event and others on our ServeNow app (HERE)