Pour enfants et jeunes

Tiznit, June 28, 2006

The city of Tiznit, our third stop on the trip, is famous for its beautiful silver jewelry. However what I found impressive about the city was the programs which the League Marocaine pour le Protection d’Enfance established there. The League set up some extremely interesting projects, differing from those of other chapters around Morocco. Since the League has no grounds for establishing a center, like the one in Taroudant, the volunteers don’t take in and raise abandoned children instead, they go out into the villages of the region and work with children and mothers of the poorer social classes, and of vulnerable families. From the presentation by several of the volunteers, we learned that the League has set up numerous activities which benefit the children and the rest of the community as well.

As we learned from the League in Taroudant, there is a great problem with children dropping out of school, especially with girls. Thus the League set up seventy boarding houses for boys and girls where they can go and stay. There the children are sponsored by another family to go to school. However the primary goal of the League is to eventually get a child to sponsor another child, creating a form of solidarity and allowing youth to be involved in the situation of their country. Sponsoring a child only costs around thirty cents a day, thus making it possible for anyone to be a sponsor. However both the sponsor, the child, and the child’s parents, must maintain certain requirements to keep their sponsorship. The child must keep high marks and the parents must commit to keeping their child in school.
The League also set up various other activities. One of my favorite projects was the “adopt a tree” activity where the children would adopt and plant a tree. This created a sense of solidarity and comradeship between the children as they work together. It also allows for the formation of a park for the whole community. Another of my favorite activities involved abstract paintings. Children from the ages seven to nine, in groups of eight to ten, painted on a common canvas their emotions and thoughts. All the children worked together to create something harmonious and extremely beautiful. What is so special about the paintings is the fact that they are unique, and there can never be another one like it, making it even more valuable.

The volunteers also worked with women from the poorer villages. Many of them have never seen or used a computer thus, the League decided to have an activity educating the women about computers and technology. This in my eyes was extremely impressive as it is the first step in allowing the women to stand on their own two feet, and not depend on their husbands. The League also had a major project of creating a cultural house for the children, where the children can come and spend time after school and before they go home in order to keep them off the streets and out of possible danger. The League after waiting eighteen years recently received the plot of land where the cultural house will be located. The originality of many of the projects set up by the group in Tiznit was extremely impressive and, was perhaps what I liked most about the program.

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