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The beginning of 2023 has been a very busy time period for our Dar Taliba (boarding school) girls in the Ourika Valley. Due to school exams, various school vacations, and the holy month of Ramadan, it’s been a busy season for the girls. However, we were able to get down to Dar Taliba at the beginning of March to host a workshop with the girls, despite all the scheduling madness. 

On March 3, 2023, Dr Omar Saadani Hassani, our agroecology coordinator, did a workshop with 20 girls from the Dar Taliba entitled Life in Our Soils, where he talked about the stages of soil formation, ocean formation and climate change. Our team is always excited to create safe spaces like these for the Dar Taliba girls because they allow the girls to explore who they are and their creativity, while also giving them the opportunity to learn about the environment and what they can do to protect it. 

The first activity of the workshop was a drawing activity, where Ourika’s most talented girls, at least in our opinion, drew countless drawings that portrayed the plant life cycle. Each drawing was unique and gave us an interesting window into the curious minds of these young ladies. 

During the workshop, Dr Omar taught the girls about the crucial role that soil plays in our ecosystem and the different stages of soil formation. As always, Dr Omar explained these topics, which can be a little dry, in a fun and lighthearted manner that kept the girls focused and engaged throughout the entire workshop. 

Initially, Dr Omar was only going to focus on the topic of soil. However, after seeing the excitement and enthusiasm of the Dar Taliba girls grow during the workshop, he decided to also talk about the ocean, the stages of its formation on the Earth and the water cycle. 

Dr Omar concluded the workshop with a discussion about climate change and the negative impact that it’s having on our environment, food security and economies. This topic created a lively debate among the Dar Taliba girls and gave them an opportunity to think about the global climate crisis and express their opinions on it. 

The end of the 2022-2023 academic year in Morocco is fast approaching. However, before it ends, we hope to deliver more educational workshops to the girls at the Dar Taliba in Ourika Valley on various topics including the benefits and uses of different medicinal and aromatic plants, biodiversity, sustainable eating practices for a healthier planet, and seed and plant care for independent growers. 

As always, we would like to thank you, our GlobalGiving family, for your ongoing support of the environmental educational activities that we do for the girls at the Dar Taliba in Ourika Valley. We hope 2023 has been an amazing year for you so far and we look forward to sharing our next update with you this summer. 

The school year has begun in Ourika Valley and over 120 new girls from neighboring villages have made Dar Taliba (the boarding school) their new home. Before we could start our activities for the new students, we had to prepare the botanical garden. We've hired local community members to help our gardener, Mr. El Hossain, with deep soil flipping and expanding cultivation zones. Given the state of the soil as a result of excessive cultivation and invasive weeds, this mission took several weeks and is still ongoing.

However, we could not wait any longer to reunite with the girls of Dar Taliba, and launch our workshops for this year. Our first workshop invited over 50 girls to watch the film documentary “Ait Atta: Nomads of the High Atlas' ',  produced by Global Diversity Foundation in collaboration with The Moroccan Biodiversity and Livelihoods Association. The movie follows the Ben Youssef family’s arduous transhumant journey from the desert-like landscape of Nkob to the green pastures of Agdal Igourdane, throughout uneven terrain of steep climbs and descents of the High Atlas Mountains.

The workshop aimed to introduce the girls to the Agdal ancestral practice, which is a communal land management system that has been practised for centuries in the High Atlas Mountains. The practice consists of restricting access to chosen highland pastures in spring months, allowing plants to regenerate each year, and as agreed upon by participating tribes. The movie was followed by a discussion on the importance of preserving the Agdal practice and the role nomads and regulated grazing play in conserving local biodiversity.

Our second workshop provided an opportunity for over 30 new girls to become acquainted with the botanical garden, following a brief presentation of the space and our project, welcoming them to the garden and explaining how it is available to them at all times, even when our team is not present.

We also decided to dedicate this workshop to presenting the oyas irrigation system, which is an agroecological practice that consists of burying water-filled clay pots underground. This way, water can dissipate into the soil as needed. It is an extremely water-efficient method that prevents excessive evaporation and water runoff.

The girls assisted in burying ten oyas in the garden after our presentation. We were delighted to witness the girls' sense of curiosity and answer their questions regarding this practice and the plants they observed in the garden.

We concluded our workshop by asking them to come up with ideas for what they'd like to do next, and it seems that everyone enjoys being close to nature and soil, as everyone is set on cultivating vegetables for our next workshop. 

Find a short video of our workshop here.

Thanks to the support of our GlobalGiving friends, we are looking forward to another amazing year for the girls of Dar Taliba and we can’t wait to tell you all about it in our upcoming reports.