Volume 2, No. 23. December 13, 2002
Meriting
attention
When someone pins
a medal on your chest, you know beyond a shadow of a doubt your efforts have
not gone unnoticed. When Sylvie Faujanet, company secretary of Grévin
& Cie and president of France’s Syndicat National des Espaces de Loisirs,
d’Attractions et Culturels (SNELAC, the trade association of amusement
parks, attractions and museums), received the Ordre National du Mérite
in October, an entire industry was recognized for its importance in French culture.
The National Order of Merit, honoring significant contributions to community,
carries the weight of France’s other high honors, the Legion of Honor and
the Arts and Letters award. France’s President Jacques Chirac awarded Faujanet
the medal on the recommendation of the minister of tourism. “I would hate
to sound pretentious, but it was my impression that the minister of tourism
was wishing to express the greater social posture of our industry relative to
other tourism-related industries in France,” Faujanet said.
She has been a pivotal figure in achieving that stature for the industry in
her country. She joined the staff of Parc Asterix in 1988 and helped bring that
venue, France’s first theme park, to fruition. Being the first was not
enough for the Asterix team; setting a high standard for all other parks to
follow was equally important, and Faujanet, director of human resources, was
essential to that goal, a goal she has stoutly pursued as her responsibilities
grew within Parc Asterix and the park’s parent company, Grévin &
Cie.
That likewise was the thrust of her work with SNELAC, “training the young
and sometimes not-so-young people who are learning the basics of this industry,”
she said. “It’s important for the industry to grow its expertise and
accumulate its skills.” That goal took on political ramifications when
SNELAC was able to get labor laws extended to workers within the amusement industry.
SNELAC itself gained greater stature as Faujanet led a membership drive beyond
theme parks to include other leisure facilities such as privately run zoos,
castles, nature parks and museums.
During the award ceremony at the Grévin Wax Museum in Paris when, in
keeping with the tradition of the award, previous Mérite winner and Forest
Hill CEO Michel Corbiére presented Faujanet the medal, the honored but
humble recipient turned her speech toward her favorite subject: giving youths
the tools to succeed. “Have faith in life,” she told the assembly
of family members, government officials, Grévin colleagues and leisure
industry leaders. “Be attentive to the signs life will send you. And life
will give a lot back.”
“My real purpose was to wink the eye and send a friendly message to my
younger relatives who were standing in the room,” Faujanet said. “I
simply wanted to tell them never to lose courage and always be on the lookout
for opportunities life may bring to them. When you operate a theme park, you
have a lot of young people working there, and it’s important to give them
direction early on in their careers and to give them self-confidence to take
whatever the first steps in their careers might be and whatever first turn their
lives might take.”
Words of wisdom from a woman of Merit.
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