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+212 6 63618536
+212 8 08599994
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In the past few years, Morocco has known many changes that revealed that the Moroccan society was not ready for the waves of ideas and challenges the Arab Spring brought with it. The uprisings in the MENA have removed the cover over so many issues and drove minorities to voice out themselves, finally.
Religious minorities, Sub-Saharan Immigrants, Amazigh (Berbers)… have come to realize that it was time to express themselves freely and make the world hear them. These changes have also paved the way for extremists and fundamentalists to use their divisive rhetoric and conspiracy theories to spread fear and negativism among these groups.
Unfortunately, Morocco was not and, still, is not equipped with the right mechanisms to bring the Moroccan society together without favoring a group over the other. We, Moroccans, have to understand that democracy cannot be instilled without freedom and there is much work to be done in this regard.
With that been said, the AFCD Foundation developed a project called Dialogue Me to tackle the issues mentioned above. AFCD Foundation organized series of workshops and trainings for participants from all over Morocco to develop a series of civic education principles and strategies. These participants will learn how to facilitate a group and foster understanding of democratic values.
Ait Ourir is based in southern Morocco, close to Marrakesh. It is a big town, with a population of about 40,000 people. Concurrent with its size, Ait Ourir has many spaces for youth, including a youth center, dozens of youth associations, several schools, an athletic field, and many clubs.
However, high rates of youth unemployment, dissatisfaction with life outside of Morocco’s larger cities, lack of confidence, and other factors contribute to lower participation rates in civil society organizations.
In addition, many initiatives focus on students and youth who already have reputations as high achievers. Dialogue me seeks to engage youth who have not previously been active in NGOs and civil society activities, while using the skills of these high achievers as mentors and trainers.
The implementation would take place over a period of 3 months. After receiving funds, AFCD and will work together to prepare and coordinate the logistics of the trainings, develop content, reach out to key leaders for recruitment, select 3 trainers from the civic education program Alumni, and then select 20 participants from four regions of Morocco.
Trainers will facilitate a series of four workshops with the support of AFCD organization and Goeth Institute. The four workshops will cover topics such as tolerance, democracy building, identity and acceptance, and dialogue in order to enable youth to prepare projects to help solve identified community problems.
After the workshops are completed, each group of youth, along with their mentor, will work on a community project. Youth will present their projects at the end of the project and then AFCD will focus on monitoring and will follow up.
Dialogue me would build capacity through the training and facilitation of 20 trainees. These trainees will be selected youth who are already active in local NGOs and community projects.
In addition, the initial pool of participants will involve 30 youth (to be further culled to 20). Whomever is not initially selected for the first round of training will be selected for the second round of the project, ensuring interest and continued participation.
Dialogue me aims to empower young people to solve problems within their own communities. By using a “training-of-trainers” (TOT) model and the use of local mentors, the project will ensure that there are always qualified young people to carry on the work.
Furthermore, the main objective of the program is to develop the capacity of each individual participant so that they will initiate their own projects with minimal assistance in the future.