Home delivery, commerce and solidarity

The nonprofit Versailles Portage was created in 1999 on the initiative of the tradesmen of the city to provide their customers with services enabling them to prolong the maintenance of elderly persons at home.

From the start, the instigators of the project wanted to provide the service to persons in difficulty, and this enabled the company to obtain workforce development status and to be recognized today as community benefactor.

Versailles Portage set three indissociable objectives: the promotion and defense of proximity business, employment by hiring persons in social or professional difficulty, intergenerational solidarity by enabling elderly persons or those with reduced mobility to receive deliveries or even to be accompanied, to continue to benefit from the services to which they are accustomed.

Since it was created, the nonprofit has provided help to more than eighty employees, thirty of them having found permanent jobs. At present, it has six messengers and errand boys on back-to-work contracts, who use 2 and 4-wheelers for deliveries.
The trip frequency and the constant change of driver caused premature wear of the vehicles, thereby increasing the risk of incidents or delays in delivery. The nonprofit therefore needs to renew and enlarge its fleet - especially the 2 wheelers. To do this, it has identified four vehicles that are more mobile and safer, with the most ecological possible drive system. The acquisition of an electric powered bicycle should help achieve greater safety and make short trips less arduous.

The Veolia Foundation has therefore been approached for the renewal and enlargement of the 2-wheeled vehicle fleet. It has also promised the association to have the supervisor of the employees of Versailles Portage take a training course in eco-driving on the campus in order to contribute by education to the civicminded and environment-friendly driving of the vehicle, so as to reduce the wear of the 4-wheelers and improve their amortization.