En Garde works with national and international sporting bodies to make sure their sport ecosystems are safe for children, athletes, and all vulnerable stakeholders by providing strategic safeguarding advice, education, training and advocacy.
En Garde has developed a methodology to assess the level of your organisation's safeguarding compliance with applicable laws and global best practices. Based on this assessment, En Garde provides strategic recommendations for the organisation to follow.
En Garde develops educational tools and programmes tailored for your sport and your stakeholders.
En Garde speaks directly to your sport's community to inspire them to support a safe culture and support you to become a safeguarding leader in sport.
We are vigilant about what happen on the playing field and we are on our guard when it comes to child protection and abuse & harassment in sport. We are ready to fight and respond when abuse & harassment does take place.
We love sport and we are competitive, we thrive for excellence and encourage people to be the best they can be.
Respect is everything to our company. Respect of Human Rights above all.
Founder
Mathilde is originally from Paris, now based in Lausanne, and has worked in sport for the last 10 years (Lagardère Sports and International Hockey Federation). Mathilde is passionate about sport and has a strong athletic background having formerly been a NCAA tennis player for the University of South Carolina.
Child Safeguarding in Sport is a topic which resonates very profoundly with her as she is a survivor of sexual abuse having been abused by her tennis coach in her youth. While she was going through a legal battle against this coach from 2014 to 2021, together with three other victims, she created the association Rebond aimed at preventing sexual violence in sports and providing holistic support to victims. Rebond is now partnered with the French Tennis Federation (FFT) in its drive towards safeguarding in tennis.
Following the conclusion of the trial against her perpetrator and his subsequent 18 year jail sentence, she decided to leave her Event Manager job at the International Hockey Federation at the end of January 2022 in order to pursue a full-time career in safeguarding.
In May 2022 she founded En Garde in order to help the key global sporting actors to implement appropriate and essential policies and procedures. These are supplemented by adapted educational programmes & training methods to efficiently prevent and respond to non-accidental violence in sport and make sure sport remains a fun place and a wonderful school of life.
In February 2022 Mathilde was selected to be become a member of the Pool of International Experts on Safe Sport at the Council of Europe.
Mathilde holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration/Marketing from the University of South Carolina, together with a MBA in Strategic Human Resources & Sustainability from the University of São Paulo and a Master in Sports Organization Management from the University Catholique de Louvain.
Mathilde speaks 4 languages, French, English, Spanish and Portuguese.
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