104-year-old Nicole won second place at Scrabble

A French initiative called l'Heure Civique, or Civic Hour, has signed up more than 24,000 volunteers across roughly 250 municipalities by asking for something almost suspiciously small: one hour a month. No long commitment, no guilt, no roster. People tend a garden, deliver groceries or sit down for a board game at a care home, and that counts. Founder Atanase Perifan started the project after reading that an elderly woman in Paris had lain dead in her apartment for four months before anyone noticed. "We need to make a pretext for speaking with one another," he said. At Les Artistes nursing home in the Batignolles neighborhood, 104-year-old Nicole Riberolles spent one recent session glaring at a Scrabble rack of consonants, then quietly laid down "EWE" for a triple-word score and second place. "It's good to work the brain," she declared. Volunteering in France has fallen since 2016. Perifan wants a million volunteers, and believes everyone has an hour.