Monday was full of encounters and discoveries for Maison Chance. We received, in particular, the visit of Serge Goossens, a baker and pastry chef since the age of 15 and owner of the Goosens Bakery in Brussels, and his family. Xavier Mouffe, founder of the organization Sao Mai, also attended the reunion with two of his benificiaries.
Maison Chance does everything to develop its project of bakery-pastry that have seen the light at Village Chance in 2012. With the goal of improving its bakery products and subsequently find and retain a loyal clientele, the bakery team of Maison Chance have met Serge Goossens. In a lapse of a few hours, they were able to follow his advices on the making of = bread dough, croissant, pain au chocolat and listen attentively to the technical tips regarding the equipment.
Xavier Mouffe, baker-pastry chef by training, wanted to pass on his knowledge to young disadvantaged children as well as street Children of Vietnam. Through his organization, he offers a training on baking and pastry making in Belgium, as well as French classes. To finance his project which started 13 years ago, he organized the selling of Vietnamese artists’ paintings and produce Belgium biscuit with an oriental flavor: curry speculoos! Thanks to his will and love, he has already helped 7 young Vietnamese. The first child of the project, Cong, currently works as an employee of the bakery at Maison Chance. Besides, the trainer of the bakery was Huy, also a former disadvantaged child who benefited from the help of Sao Mai for 4 years. Back then, when Xavier proposed him to work for Maison Chance, he did not hesitated to put all his knowledge to the profit of young disadvantaged individuals because himself was in the same situation before finding its lucky star, Sao Mai. Sang and Nang, two other beneficiaries of the organization Sao Mai, also took part of this reunion.
Thanks to the help of Xavier, Sang has been living in Belgium for the past 4 years, where he pursued an education in hotel management. After obtaining his diploma successfully, he plans to specialize in business. Nang is not only the adoptive son of Xavier, but also the one of the Goossens family who, by taking part of Xavier’s program, enabled him to follow the training in the pastry shop of the family and housed him for a year.
All these people with their lives strangely intertwined had the pleasure to see each other again and were delighted to discover the big family of Maison Chance !
Élodie Zufferey