In Concise, the north 2025 fold is in full swing. First of the four major summer gatherings organized by the Vaudois country youth, it mixes sports competitions, collective life and parties. A centenary tradition always very alive.
Since Wednesday, the village of Concise has been hosting thousands of young people in a temporary setting installed in a field with a view of Lake Neuchâtel. Until Sunday, nearly 30,000 visitors are expected in the northern Giron 2025, an event managed by local youth with the support of 1,500 volunteers.
On the program: sports, music, bars and catering competitions. On site, the participants sleep in a tent or in a trailer, in a large -part setting built by local youth.
Girons are typical gatherings of the cantons of Vaud and Friborg, but unknown in other French -speaking cantons. Organized each summer, they are carried by youth companies. The Vaudoise Federation of Campagnard Youths (FVJC) brings together approximately 9,000 members divided into 200 local sections.
A social tire and intergenerationel
President of the FVJC since January, Daniel Turin was Friday the guest of the morning, live from Concise. He recalled the historical foundations of these events there: “The founders of the Federation have decided to set up events to maintain a social bond for young people in the countryside.”
Created in the 1910s to combat the rural exodus, the Federation has since made a structuring meeting for youth. Even today, the principles remain similar: intergenerational link, local anchoring, volunteering and direct involvement of young people in the organization.
Neither frozen folklore, nor simple party
“A giron? It’s simple, it’s five days on a party place that is in the middle of the fields,” sums up Daniel Turin. There are young people from all over the canton, residents of the host village, athletes and volunteers who provide logistics services, security, kitchen or even assembly of facilities.
The atmosphere is festive, but the work upstream is substantial. In Concise, a committee of seven people and around fifty active members have prepared the land for months. A wooden saloon was entirely built by members of the youth of the village, in their free time, weekend after weekends. “And that is work that is not noticeable. And then we cannot do it by drinking glasses,” said the president of the FVJC.
Faced with the clichés that reduce the girons to alcoholic excesses, Daniel Turin is indeed to qualify: “I do not think that Giron equal drunk. It is true that we like a drink, but we must also realize everything that is done around to be able to enjoy the party and the fold”, he explains.
An informal training space
Beyond the party, the Girons represent a space for learning and empowering for young people. Planning, team management, logistics, communication: as many skills that youth members acquire in action. “It is a skills rise of young people. It is not given, in any organization, to young people between 16 and 25 years old, to be able to build a demonstration which will bring together 30,000 people over five days,” notes Daniel Turin.
The federative structure also allows young people from different villages to meet, exchange and maintain a social fabric in rural regions where the rally occasions are sometimes limited.
Interview by Pietro Bugnon
Adaptation Web: Tristan Duke
