About ADE – Amis des Ecoles

19/11/2019

2019 – A Year of Progress

As 2019 winds down, it’s important that we reflect on our accomplishments and thank those who helped make all of our achievements possible. Since our founding 13 years ago, we have made large strides in improving the quality of life for the children and citizens of the villages that we work in. This year in particular has been monumental for us thanks to our increased presence on social media and our new partnerships with Breakthrough USA, GIZ, OCP, and Terre Plurielle. Before we wind down for the season, we’d like to highlight a few of our major accomplishments.

1) Women’s Training Center in Oussertek

Our women’s training center in the Oussertek Valley is now open for business! On Saturday November 16th 2019, our center was officially inaugurated and opened as a place for local women to learn marketable skills, like sewing, crochet, weaving, cooking and preserving fruits and veggies. It is also a destination for volunteers, hikers and tourists. The terrace has a Moroccan salon for beautiful views, tea and food. The 1st floor has a mini studio for trainers to stay and a large kitchen where the local women can cook and make preserves. The ground floor has a large open space for workshops – here volunteer trainers can help teach the women new skills. The ground floor also has office space and a storage room for supplies. We are grateful to our partners and donors INDH, W4WIN (Women4women In Need) represented by Sonia Adnane, the Sadhu Vaswani Center in Casablanca, Maroc Bureau, and a few anonymous donors who have helped make this project happen.

2) Sustainable Building Project in Tata and Midelt

One of our most exciting new projects this year is our partnership with the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, or the “GIZ”, a German international development corporation that implements technical projects. Their mission is to plan, fund and execute economic development projects that focus on social inclusion and environmental protection. Amis Des Ecoles has been working with the “GIZ” and Eva Klewno, our partner architect, to renovate 3 schools in Tata and 2 preschools in Midelt. Our main goal is to develop a comfortable learning space for students during the winter and the summer. As with many rural regions in Morocco, Tata and Midelt struggle with subzero temperatures in the winter and stifling heat in the summer (Over 50 Celsius!). With the help of Klewno Architecture, we will refit these learning spaces with high-tech insulation like cork and rock wool and add economically viable heating and cooling solutions ultimately creating a comfortable climate in these classrooms so that the children can focus on learning. Learn more about this project by reading our blog.

3) Multimedia Center and Library in Oussertek

This center was built by Act4community, employees of the OCP group. It is destined not only for all the children of the village as a place to read and check out books, but also for interested adults to be able to use the computer to learn a language or any subject. Teachers from the local school can also use the center to enhance their classroom teaching and teach computer skills. This project was financed entirely by OCP. We are now raising funds for a librarian / facilitator to manage the facility and make sure the local children and villagers can use this amazing resource to it’s fullest capacity.

Children Learning Language Skills in our Multimedia Center

4) 5,000 Fruit Trees and 5 school gardens in Oussertek and Tata

The Philippe Porte family donated 15,000 Euros in his name after his passing to build a reservoir and to plant over 4,000 trees in Oussertek and to plant vegetable gardens in 5 schools in Tata. This project was completed in July and over 1,600 families will benefit from the fruit harvests, both for personal consumption and from the ability to preserve and sell fruits to passing tourists. Environmental projects, such as tree planting and environmental awareness, are one of the vital activities that we promote. We teach the children how to plant trees and gardens and how to install the irrigation-drip system in school yards. Since Amis des Ecoles was founded in 2006, we have planted over 8,700 trees throughout Morocco. This system teaches students to be aware of their environment and to not take their water usage for granted; while contributing to the civic education of the students.

5) Aguerzagn “Show School” in Tata

Happy school children in Tata with their new prescription glasses, standing in front of the new security wall built around our “Show School” in Tata.

In the Tata region, we are almost finished renovating our “show school”, named Aguerzagn located in Adis Tata. Aguerzagn will be our model school for all of our future renovations. This school has currently 18 children enrolled, but our goal with the renovations is to attract more local children who have elected not to attend school due to the dilapidated facilities and lack of security. We are building a wall around the premises to avoid vandalism from people and animals. We are refurbishing the toilets and the water fountain. We have tiled the two classrooms and the future library with our beautiful Popham Design tiles (Popham had donated over 25 tonnes of tiles to Amis Des Écoles this year alone!). The library has been renovated and books were curated by our partner Amina Hachimi Alaoui from Yanbow Alkitab. Next year we will insulate the classrooms with funding from the GIZ project. The planting of the pedagogical garden, and tree planting will be done in parallel. By using this school as our “show school”, we can give future donors, partners and volunteer a clearer picture of what can be accomplished in every school that we touch. Apart from the school renovation in Tata, we have built over 20 water fountains in the region, distributed 800 pairs of prescription glasses, installed 30 water boilers for showers in school boarding houses, distributed 11,000 pieces of clothing, 2 tons of food, and 2,000 books to various schools in the Tata region.

Beautiful Tiles Donated by Popham Design

Our deepest thanks to all of our partners and donors who have contributed to our success this year. We wish you all the happiest of Holiday Seasons.

Best Wishes,

Amal Zniber, President and Founder

24/03/2019

Amis Des Écoles – Looking towards the future

Erika About ADE Founder Blog

It all began in the winter of 2005, when my husband and I, then teachers in Casablanca, went with a group of students and teachers on a field trip to the Ait Bouguemez valley in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco, a hard to reach area with harsh geographic and socioeconomic realities.

We were moved and impressed by the sight of the many daily struggles that both students and teachers in these villages faced. These isolated regions have difficult terrain, lack the most basic infrastructure and have a high level of poverty. These challenges directly impact the children’s access to education. As a result, many rural children like those from Aït Bougemaz, embark on life with a minimal education, placing them at a disadvantage in our rapidly changing world. We travelled back to Casablanca with a firm conviction and a strong motivation to bring change within our limited personal means. Nonetheless, we were motivated with a sense of goodwill and charged activism. Little by little we managed to engage a selfless group of volunteers, motivated companies and individuals to donate resources to our cause. Thus, began the collection of the necessary funds to launch the association’s very first project, a school renovation.

The project involved the renovation of the Aarous village school in the Ait Bouguemez region of Morocco, which was severely deteriorated and in disrepair. Thanks to the generosity of our first sponsors, our project was a success and we have not looked back since. Since 2005, we have renovated 315 classrooms, built and renovated 350 sanitary facilities, built 122 water fountains, planted 5000 trees, and distributed clothes and food in 7 different regions for thousands of school children and their families.

Fountains provide clean water for drinking and hand washing.

2019 is a big year for Amis des Écoles. It is our 13th anniversary and an opportunity for us to celebrate our achievements. Perhaps even more important, we are defining our path for years to come. While Amis Des Écoles has operated behind the scenes, focusing on our mission and our work, we realize that in order to expand our efforts we need to expand our visibility to show the world who we are and what we do. That being said, we are currently expanding our PR and digital media efforts to show in real time how your support and donations make a difference.

In addition, our goal is to identify partners and other complementary NGOs that will help us expand our efforts even further. For example, last year we began a beautiful partnership with Yanbow Al Kitab, a Casablanca-based children’s book publisher committed to spreading reading across rural regions through books and reading methods. To date, we have distributed over 10,000 books throughout 5 regions.

Children are given books and taught methods by partner NGO, Yanbow Al Kitab.

Sustainability is also a major focus for us in 2019. We are currently identifying ways to give teachers a more comfortable workspace and children a more suitable learning environment. We have plans to build a duplicable model for a sustainable school in Tata that doesn’t require a large budget and that can be built quickly and easily across the country. We also have plans to plant 7,000 trees.

Temperatures in some regions can reach 50 C and dip to below 0. Insulation keeps children and teachers comfortable in cold and hot conditions.

Finally, our work over the past 13 years has shown us the importance of enhancing economic opportunities for the families of the school children. For young girls in particular, many of them are pulled out of school at an early age so that they can help their mothers with domestic tasks like washing clothing. By installing an automatic washing center in the village, the mothers can then wash the laundry while their daughters continue to attend school. With this extra time comes opportunities to learn new marketable skills. Our training center for carpet weaving, crochet, cooking and language learning, is in the finishing stages. We hope to open the center and begin our training program by Q2 of this year.

Women learn to knit handicrafts that can then be sold for additional income.
(Amis Des Ecoles is working to set up sales channels for finished crafts)

In order to achieve these goals, we need support from you. Not only in the form of donations and supplies like building materials, school supplies, food and clothing, but also expertise from professionals such as Doctors, Architects, Contractors, Grant Writers, PR Professionals, Bloggers, Graphic Designers and more. We are also always accepting applications for university-level interns who can help us with daily administrative work. (Please contact us at contact@amisdesecoles.com)

As it has from the beginning, the Moroccan school child will always remain at the heart of our planning and will influence every decision that we make. The success of our mission – recognizing and promoting the dignity, equality and respect for school children in remote rural environments – depends on the support of individuals, companies, international agencies and NGOs. Without it we could not exist.

Thank you for your interest, passion and commitment to our mission. There has never been a more exciting time for Amis des Écoles.

Thank you for your support,

Amal Zniber

contact@amisdesecoles.org