Students Visit Morocco for First Service Learning Trip Since 2019

Nine Morningside students visited Morocco in May for a 10-day trip to the capital city Rabat and inland Marrakech. The trip was organized in coordination with the Centre for Cross Cultural Learning (CCCL) in Rabat and was structured around visiting NGOs and social enterprises to learn about their functions, organizational structure, the causes they work towards, and the challenges they face. In preparation for the NGO visits, students attended lessons about Moroccan history and geography, Daridja (local dialect of Arabic), and the state of civil society in Morocco today at CCCL.

The NGOs visited in Rabat included the AMPF (Moroccan Association of Family Planning), which focuses on sexual health and widening access to contraceptives, the ADFM (Democratic Association of Moroccan Women), which lobbies the government for progressive reforms to women’s rights, and Verdaterre, a social enterprise that helps farmers make viable farms on previously inarable land. In Marrakech, they spent time at Al Nour, a non-profit that trains women with disabilities to take up gainful employment, and Project SOAR, an NGO that seeks to empower young girls to value themselves as equal members of society, to pursue higher education and independent careers, and to overcome stigma around menstrual health.