Support girls education in rural Morocco

Dear Donor,

We hope you had a good start of the spring term and enjoying the sun coming out a bit more every week…! 

Slowly we are starting to receive news about which schools are re-opening in the mountains post earthquake. It seems the Ouirgane school is re-opening in September and so will college in Asni and Talaat n Yacoub. This means we will be able to use the Ouirgane house at full occupancy in September and we will be on the look out in Asni for rentals. If the Lycee school also opens we will be on the lookout for a larger plot of land to rebuild ideally 3 houses on 1 plot of land while in the meantime we rent. We would do the same for Talaat n Yacoub. 

EFA ASSOCIATION EMERGENCY RESPONSE

On the ground in Morocco they are operating a multi-staged approach to rebuilding after the earthquake. The stages are being executed in parallel by the various teams at EFA Association in Morocco and EFA Morocco LTD in the UK. 

1. Renting temporary accommodation near the new schools so they can accommodate the students and offer the familiar supportive environment with their peers and dedicated house mother - key to their studies which have suffered greatly in the first half of the school year and not unimportantly had just recovered from the COVID lockdown impact on their education. But also, to support the girls in their healing journey after experiencing immeasurable trauma. 
1. In December we rented 2 houses in Chwiter where we are housing 55 girls
2. In March we rented a house in Ben Youssef for 40 girls. (outskirts to Marrakech so house with closest proximity to the city) to house girls that will be able to attend Ben Youssef school in Marrakech post destruction of Talaat Yacoub Boarding house (the Lycée there is also destroyed). 
2. Providing full care; food, clothing and necessary equipment replacement that was mostly lost in the quake for our school going girls in the temporary boarding houses.
3. Renovating the moderately damaged house in Ouirgane: The renovations to the Ouirgane house have started Mid February and are nearly finalised! This house will be fully operational for a full school-year by September and we are planning to use it for holiday camps and summer camps for the girls to be able to catch up with missed study time during the disaster and the teacher strike that followed this. This is especially important for the girls in their pre-exam year. 
4. Demolition of damaged houses and planning rebuilding off new houses: We have received approval from the local governments to demolish the severely damaged houses paving the way for us to start planning for the rebuilding. Demolition will start soon after giving the local community sufficient notice for safety reasons. The planning for rebuilding will commence once we know 100% where and when the government will re-open the local schools. 
5. Structuring extra-curricular program; As mentioned above, due to all school going children having missed much school hours in the aftermath of the earthquake (and the subsequent teacher strike that followed) we are working on a program we can run in the school holidays to provide extra attention to tutoring and more intensive educational support in the form of holiday camps but also importantly give them the much needed mental support to allow them to heal from a turbulent school year.

You can imagine that without your support we would not have been able to do this so we are eternally grateful to you.

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Warm regards,

The EFA Team