KEEP 100 MOROCCAN CHILDREN AWAY FROM ABANDONMENT

In September 2013, in our Family Strengthening
Program in Imzouren, we are supporting 45 families including 103 children,
giving them the chance to break the circle of poverty. We are firmly convinced
that the best place for a child is beside his mother and we believe strongly in
our program, which aims at preventing children’s abandonment by providing day
care and vocational training to single-parent families.

After all this year of hard work at school, the
children participated to the holiday program with the children of SOS
Children’s Village. 12 of them had the chance to leave to Imouzzer Kandar for
vacation, due to the gift of a generous sponsor.  They really enjoyed the fabulous moments they
shared on this occasion, which gave them new friends to play with!

Further to the 2 months holidays, the new
academic year started and 6 children of the Family Strengthening Program are
studying in our Herman Gmeiner school and 2 children in our Kindergarten. The
other children are studying now in public schools. This is due to the
difficulties we are encountering with the crisis to finance our Herman Gmeiner
school. Today, we cannot offer to take the children from the Family
Strengthening Program for free in our schools.

Last year, we noticed that the children from
the Family Strengthening Program who were studying in public schools had got
low results, even despite the after school support we offered them. Therefore
we are planning to intensify our efforts, trying also to get transportation for
the children to attend the after school support. In order to give the children
and youths the best chances to success in their studies, we have requested a
support from the Education Ministry and a project is under studying.

Regarding the training of the mothers, the
municipality gave us the opportunity to set up 3 workshops in a reception centre
in order to install the sewing and baking machines, as well as the soap
manufacturing materials. The training of the mothers will begin at the end of
September.

We are thanking you so much for your support,
which helps us give these children and their mothers the best chances to get
their autonomy!

When evaluating the school results this trimester, we have been aware that 15 youths had decided to quit school,
explaining that they had difficulties to keep on studying due to their poverty and to their school difficulties. We have been gathering this group of youths altogether with their mothers in order to orientate them towards vocational
training, organizing a visit to the local orientation center and finally 12 youths were orientated towards vocational training.

In April, we had the visit of a doctor in the SOS school and the SOS Children’s Village at the occasion of the International Day. Therefore, the children and the mothers from our program who had some needs have been making a check-up.

We have been also proceeding to our annual auto-evaluation of the program, discussing with the mothers, the children and youths and our local partners in order to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the program in order to make it more performing.

During the spring holidays, our youths participated to various activities organized in our SOS Children’s Village by
the educators and teachers and some of them participated to a language camp in Al Hoceima with the youths from other schools from the region, opening them to the community. We have been celebrating also our Family Day in May and this has been a wonderful occasion to spend time together sharing funny activities!

After a long academic year working hardly, all the children are now preparing the End of Year show that promises to be again the occasion to share good moments and show their talents of actors! Theater activities are a good mean to raise awareness and the children are very proud to participate in the shows, chorales and comic shows!

Thanks a lot to all of you, who allow the 120 children of our program and their mothers to keep on building themselves a better future!