General Gilles Modéré, commander of the French Air Force Officers Schools (EOAA), conferred the first “Saint-Exupéry for Youth” Prize to 3 secondary school students on Wednesday, 3 October 2012 during an awards ceremony held at Air Base 701 (BA701) in Salon-de-Provence, in the presence of François d’Agay, President of the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Youth Foundation (F-ASEJ), and Philippe de Saint-Exupéry, Vice-President of the F-ASEJ.
This exceptional award gave these 3 young laureates the opportunity to obtain their basic pilot’s licence, while immersing themselves in values dear to aviators, such as self-knowledge, teamwork and also openness to the world, in the spirit of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
The “Saint-Exupéry for Youth” Prize was created in January 2012 in partnership with the Fondation de France through the Charles Mercier fund, in the aim of “effectively rewarding students in their sixth year of secondary school who would have shown themselves to be worthy of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry”.
The implementation of this prize was made possible thanks to the voluntary commitment of officers and students of the Salon-de-Provence Air Force Base, supervised by Lieutenant-Colonel Hervé de Saint-Exupéry of the headquarters of the officers schools of BA701, in charge of the “tutorial system of the Air Force School” operation, in accordance with the equal opportunity plan.
