WUNRN
MOROCCO - RURAL EDUCATION
PROGRAM FOR WOMEN & GIRLS TO BREAK CYCLE OF ILLITERACY & POVERTY
Fatima Kadmire
(left), one of the beneficiaries of the literacy programme for women in Beni
Zuli. Photograph: Santorri Chamley
In a tiny
classroom at the Maison de Citoyenneté support centre for the education of
rural girls and women in Beni Zuli, an isolated village in Zagora, deep in
south-eastern Morocco's
"The best thing is that I
can now dial numbers and send text messages on my mobile phone without having
to rely on others to do it for me," says Kadmire, 21, who is sitting at a
small desk at the front of the class.
She is one of the beneficiaries
of an accelerated literacy programme targeting rural women and girls in Zagora
and other remote regions in
Afdes is part of Réseau
Associatif pour le Développement et la Démocratie (Razded), an umbrella group
of associations and NGOs established in 2007. The organisation's aim is to
strengthen the role of women in Zagora's economic development and democratic
process, in partnership with the department for literacy.
As well as the 300 hours they
have to acquire basic reading, writing and numeracy skills, beneficiaries are
given lessons in social and civil rights, development, environment and
income-generating activities such as weaving, baking and beekeeping.
The Maison de Citoyenneté, or
Citizenship House – a peach-coloured building opposite the mosque on Beni
Zuli's main thoroughfare – is one of the first adult education community
support centres in
Beni Zuli, which has 18,000
inhabitants, is a beautiful village with traditional mud-brick houses. Like the
rest of the province, it is flanked by the imposing
The nearest middle school to Beni
Zuli is 14km (8.6 miles) away, in
As well as community support
centres like the Maison de Citoyenneté, accessible literacy classes are held in
mosques and other public places. With approximately 240,000 of Zagora's largely
Berber and Arabic population living in hard-to-reach rural areas, hundreds of
modest dormitories for girls have also been built close to middle schools as
part of the accelerated literacy programme. More are planned.
One of the main objectives of the
programme, which is enabling Kadmire and other rural women and girls to
overcome deep-rooted cultural and traditional constraints, is integrated social
and economic development. Post-literacy training will enable them to
consolidate the literacy skills they acquire, preparing them to run
micro-projects.
Such help, which promises to lift
rural women out of the cycle of illiteracy and poverty, is welcome. King
Mohammed VI pushed through landmark reforms to the Mudawana family code against
tough opposition from religious conservatives in 2004. The measures attempted
to address a range of issues including underage marriage, women's rights,
domestic violence, forced child labour and sexual trafficking. Despite the
reforms, however, many rural women remain second-class citizens.
Almost 20,000 women and girls
have benefited from the accelerated, state-funded literacy programme since it
was introduced in Zagora in 2007. Its grants cover course fees,
teacher-training and learning tools such as textbooks and pens.
"The
trend has been to shift from standard literacy, in which programmes were
limited to teaching students the basics of reading, writing and computing, to a
literacy of social integration of beneficiaries in their environment. The
target is 1 million beneficiaries per year and to reduce