Le Rire Médecin

Mission & Vision

Picture a children’s hospital where patients no longer fear a needle, dread their bedroom door opening, or cry when a nurse approaches them…

Le Rire Médecin works to make this vision a reality through the support and expertise of over 152 hospital clowns. Together, we deliver over 100,000 tailor-made performances a year to children in 20 hospital all over France, bringing lighthearted moments of play and happiness that support their healing journey.

While our nonprofit operates solely in France, our history takes us back to NYC in the 90’s: Caroline Simonds, working as a hospital clown herself in the Bronx, decided to pick up and move with her baby to France, so children overseas could benefit from her skills. There, she founded Le Rire Médecin, her second-born, which turns 35 next year: an amazing legacy we are proud to support!

Actions Led

Le Rire Medecin works closely with hospital staff—in fact, we only launch a new program when our services are requested by the top management of any given hospital. While we help nurses and other hospital staff interact with young patients, the core of our work is to provide comforting/engaging entertainment to hospitalized children. We help them cope more easily with the pain and distress of an illness, and we support families so they who in turn are stronger to fight alongside their loved one.

By providing improvised one-of-a-kind shows for each child we meet, we help make them feel special: they are a child again, not just a file number with prescriptions and MRIs waiting for them. With 43 programs in 80 specialized wards, we ensure kids don’t miss out on the power of laughter and joy on their journey to recovery.

Projects that U.S. Donors Can Support

Any grant will help make sure our activities thrive: we take pride in never having closed a program in over 30 years! We also hope to open new programs, we have a pending list of 17 requests. Our main budgetary allocations are clown fees, operating costs, and special projects (new costumes, new trainings etc).

Our main activities are as follows:

– support hospitalized children and their families cope with the situation

– support hospital staff and help them through invasive medical procedures

– maintain ongoing programs and help launch new ones

– develop our 3 specific programs: home hospitalization, young patients and fragile newborns

– provide peer to peer artistic and medical training for clowns

Learn more through our blog article published on May 16th, 2022.

(c) Adrien Daste, Sylvie Biscioni et Géraldine Aresteanu