There are too many signs of youth's disquiet in our modern societies: impulsiveness, poor marks, repetitive punishments, refusal to obey to any kind of authority, interplays of ascendancy, violence of speech, rudeness, and so on. Meanwhile, parenthood seems less and less fit to cope with that: Bonds are getting tense, and social welfare shows only a limited influence. Specialists regret its lateness, its obscure impact, its weakness in adapting to social and urban transformations, and its conservatism.

Youth is our most valuable good. It is our future, our most lively strength. The convention on the rights of the child advocates education over punishment to answer the call of children. And yet, it seems punishment has been, for several years, a growing temptation, out of a lack of alternative, in order to quiet down worries. It is considered as compulsory for our safety, even if we are aware of the fact that its' most obvious effect - confinement - entails high rates of subsequent offence and breaks the lively spirit of young people.

So, what should we do to face the rejuvenation of first offences, the collective dynamic they use and the both verbal and physical violence that goes along? What should we do, as we notice that children who commit offences are most frequently the ones who are abused, beaten up, rejected by their families, by the school system? They are also the ones in search of landmarks, of meaning. What must we do to answer the increasing calls of children, the very calls that lead them to violent or self-destructive offences threatening their future, and the stability of our social development?

Claude beau - an experienced magistrate of minors who has been observing those evolutions for a couple of decades - has just brought up a new response to that issue. It is a response with a more important sense of education than of punishment, a response advocating anticipation over reaction : That response is called precocious prevention. Its' targets are children under twelve, and their parents. Her idea is one of social development, with a hint of management in order to maximize its impact. This socioeducational approach implicates the parents, and is based both on strictness and benevolence to stimulate as soon as possible a child and give him what he needs to fulfil his potentiality.

The first step of this project has been to establish a rational approach - as regards public expenditure - to determine which young people should benefit from it. A study was thus lead, based upon the analysis of the story of 100 minors that were both in danger, and repetitive offenders. This study revealed that 40 symptomatic troubles - as regards family or social life, psychology, behaviour or scholarship - could warn us about potentially risky behaviours. It showed that these alerts could be seen as soon as a child is in between six and twelve, that-is-to-say the age when a child constructs his social landmarks and when, surprisingly enough, he is not really protected by socioeducational interventions.

Those results encouraged the pursuit of the project in order to create an innovative socioeducational answer that would have effects not only on the symptoms, but also on the causes of the trouble.

The association Mission Possible started in 2002, and it was the first organisation dealing with precocious prevention. His pilot project focused on about fifty children, along with their parents. Spectacular advances were made in several areas : School, Social troubles, behaviour. Those children were considered as makings of criminals, and it is the best proof of the effects of a precocious intervention on children that were doomed to be on the fringe of society (some were even considered as mentally retarded).

Every day, after school, the children benefit both from an individualized attention and from a social life learning: In order to initiate them to food education, they are given snacks. They benefit from intellectual and cognitive stimulations so that they know how to learn, and feel a need for it. They also take part in psychological support groups, sport activities and art classes. All of this in order to give them a sense of what living and building together means. Mission Possible is thus a balanced project which is meaningful both for the child and for his parents. It ensures an educational continuity and a global coherence based on shared objectives for the child. It is a source of security for him, of stability, of self-confidence, leading him to become reconciled with himself and with the others.

It's been five years since the association was launched, and in the sight of the progress made by the children, it has gained the trust of the "Education Nationale" (French state education
system) and of the local communities that benefited from it.
It thus accompanied the creation of six structures of precocious prevention settled in six different problem neighbourhoods. Others are currently being created. It developed a proven method of socioeducational intervention favouring a possibility for the optimal reproduction of its' actions and gains on those benefiting from it.

Its fight has today convinced public powers of the necessity to act early. It still remains for the agents to acquire those new methods of socioeducational intervention that are not to be improvised, and that are due to bring progress.
In a political context where public security is an issue leading to more and more repressive measures for younger and younger children, Claude Beau has recently called together international agents as regards prevention in order to bring closer the international researches made in those areas. The "First International Days of Prevention" managed to gather more that 150 academics, searchers, instructors, teachers, psychiatrists, paediatrics, and magistrates, coming from more then a dozen countries, including Sweden or Brazil. This colloquium made it possible to notice that precocious prevention was an efficient answer, no matter where it was used, as long as it was used with method.
We had the idea to make it an opposable right for the child and his family. It lead us to create an international network for social prevention whose goal was to promote this process of precocious prevention and to constantly optimize its' quality.
Precocious prevention must be spread, because:
• It generates savings, as a Canadian study proved that a euro invested in social prevention leads to the saving of seven euros that would have been spent in punishment or cure.
• It is relevant: a study lead in the University of Montreal showed that precocious prevention favours on a long basis the fulfilment of a problem child.
• It is needed, on an international basis: dangerous youth behaviour grow to excess, generational relationships and becoming more and more tense, and punishment is inefficient and make things worse as regards this shading-off that puts cohabitation and future into jeopardy.

There is no doubt that today precocious prevention concerns us all because it concerns both children, which is future, and family. Alongside the professionals of infancy and family, public decision-makers, foundations, and company managers must unite as regards their means, their skills, and their capacity, to promote the creation of projects of social prevention, in order to help building up the conditions for a long term stable social development.
Together, this task is easier, and more exhilarating.
This collective contribution means that each child is our vital strength, that they can plan their future and bear with them all the values on which is based the social contract.

This hand, reaching out for them, will give them the desire to give back in return, for they will have received.