By Fatima Zahra Laaribi | HAF's Lead Women's Empowerment Trainer
The President of the High Atlas Foundation (HAF), Dr Ben-Meir, and HAF´s Lead Women's Empowerment Trainer, Laaribi, presented HAF’s mission at the University College London’s (UCL) Faculty of Law, located at Bentham House.
Twenty-four students and professors attended the meeting to learn about HAF’s mission in Morocco and the participatory empowerment and planning methodologies it applies with local communities. Our meeting in London is in preparation of UCL’s visit to Morocco to collaborate with HAF’s projects in gender-based development, with a particular focus on urban public health.
Two presentations were given. The first one was about fulfilling Morocco’s development vision of local communities, delivered by Dr. Ben-Meir. The second one, “The Integration of Empowerment and Participatory Methodologies”, by Ms. Laaribi, was on women’s and girls’ empowerment in Morocco. The presentations aimed to deepen the students' understanding of HAF´s development work in Morocco.
Each student will have the opportunity to work on specific projects during their upcoming visit to Morocco. More specifically, four projects were presented to the students as a scope of their work with HAF:
Water as a priority for Moroccan communities:
The objective of this project is to study challenges related to water in Morocco and their effects on health. Field coordinators from HAF will plan this activity in rural areas in the Taroudant province.
Tree Planting, Climate Change, and Health:
The main purpose of this project is to study, analyze, and present the impact of community-based tree planting on: 1-human and environmental health, 2-climate change mitigation, and 3-reinvestment in sustainable development projects.
Gender and Health:
This project will deal with the questions of how health content specific to Moroccan women can be integrated into HAF´s methodology for gender empowerment and development. Another layer will discuss how the Imagine empowerment workshop is key to achieving sustainable development processes.
Public spaces in Marrakech´s city center:
In the course of this project the quality of public spaces in Marrakech will be analyzed in relation to climate change, health, and other factors.
We would like to thank Professor Jacobi of UCL for his vision for this initiative and to Faheem, the Graduate Teaching Assistant, for the wonderful collaboration. We look forward to this university-Moroccan community partnership.
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