The things that make it worthwhile

Yes, another post! It may seem like I suddenly have a lot of time on my hands to type all of this, but that’s definitely not the case! I’ve had a lot of assorted thoughts typed out for some time, but hadn’t gotten around to refining them to posts – and since our training is coming to a close soon (eek!), I’m trying to gather most of the training-related thoughts and turn them into posts now! This is a long one, but full of good stuff!

I've told you a bit about the intensive language component of our training in a previous post, but haven't written as much about the other things we've been doing! In addition to the language, we've had some hands-on training we've gotten for the kind of work we’re going to be doing in the Dar Chebabs (youth centers) once we get to our final sites. There’s a vast array of projects a volunteer might work on over the course of their service, but for training purposes we've gotten some practice with basic things all of us will do at some point: teaching some English classes, community analysis (PACA!) and planning activities for youth.

English teaching

Though it isn’t intended to be the focus of our work, almost all of us will start out teaching English to students at the Dar Chebab, for two reasons. First, there is a real need for English tutoring, especially at the high school level – in order to pass the Bac (the exam used both for earning a high school diploma and college entrance), students must demonstrate a certain proficiency in English. Second, teaching English is a good way to gain trust and build relationships in the community, especially amongst the youth. It would be difficult to hit the ground running with youth development activities like starting new clubs, doing leadership workshops, etc. without being known and trusted in some familiar capacity – like teaching. 

  

Spring camp:

Only a few weeks into training, we had the opportunity to help out with the day camp held at the Dar Chebab during students’ spring break. It was open to all ages, but the majority of the kids were in the 10-16 age range. Each day of camp was full of classes, games, songs, and countless other activities, but we helped out mainly during the morning sessions by leading beginners’ English classes. I was frankly pretty nervous about the classes – I’d never done any teaching for English as a second language before, and even my general teaching experience had been with much older students (mostly adults, in fact). After all my worrying, though, I’m happy to say that the classes ended up going really well! We focused on a content-based method, which means teaching English by way of teaching about another important topic – health, arts, environment, etc, rather than just giving a traditional lesson. Each day had a different content theme – Greetings, food/nutrition, exercise/fitness, and empowerment. The first half of the morning was always dedicated to the content-based lesson, and the second half was a game, usually based off of the content learned earlier that morning.

Each of the days seemed like a great success, and I was so blown away by the enthusiasm of the youth. Though we did try to make the lessons interesting and fun, I was still a little bit concerned that they wouldn’t be interested in sitting in “class” during their spring break. To my pleasant surprise, quite the opposite was true! Not only did they pay attention, but they seemed genuinely interested and excited to be learning – and that was truly an inspiration. Most of the kids picked up on things very quickly, and we were able to teach a lot more than we planned for on a few of the days.

My favorite, as you might have guessed, was “empowerment day.” We taught vocabulary and expressions related to “What are you good at?” “When I grow up, I want to be,” and various hobbies and professions. The kids were all so excited to talk about their skills, interests, and aspirations – seeing them light up like that when talking about their passions made my whole week. Their aspirations were incredibly diverse, too – including doctors, teachers, rap artists, writers, and policewomen! We had each student draw a picture of “what they want to be,” and then guided them through writing down some steps needed to reach that goal (studying, finishing high school, saving money, etc.) on the back of the drawing. By the end of the activity, each student had a beautiful picture of their future self and at least 3 steps that they could start taking to realize that goal. Awesome! Of all the great drawings, there is one in particular that I will never forget: One student drew herself as a teacher, and her future students in the picture had a speech bubble that said, “I want to be…” – she made an effort to explain it to me, too, saying that she wanted to teach like we were, and get her students to imagine all that they can be, too. That moment, that testament to the lasting impact that can be sparked by just one short class, is something I’ll think of anytime the going gets tough. If I ever begin to doubt myself and question if my work is making any difference, I’ll remember that drawing, and all that it represents.

We hung all of their drawings on the wall as reminders of their goals!

The drawing I referenced about the future teacher of empowerment

Policewoman!

Engineer!

English classes:

We also taught three days of after-school English classes for the youth towards the end of training. There were more kids in attendance compared with spring camp, and the ages (and levels of English skills) varied a lot more. A few volunteers worked with the high school students who were relatively advanced in their English, and the rest of us worked on basics with the younger kids. The classes went well, but we noticed that the kids were definitely more rowdy during these after-school classes than they were during spring camp. It could have been that they were less able to focus after being in school all day, or just that the sheer number of them made it difficult for everyone to stay on task. In any case, we got some great hands-on practice with managing a large, diverse group of students like what we might find in our final sites. Plus, it was awesome to see so many students come out for something like extra classes after school – so much enthusiasm!

The biggest game of duck-duck-goose I have ever witnessed!

PACA!

Participatory Analysis:

I explained all about PACA (Participatory Analysis for Community Action) in a previous post, and we’ve done a lot more with it since then. There were a few bumps in the road, but all in all I’ve really come to appreciate the PACA process as a whole. We’ve gained some valuable insight into our community, regarding such a wide range of aspects – positives, negatives, resources, needs, organization, history, daily schedules, lifestyles, and perhaps most importantly, how each of these differs for various communities within Merja (eg. youth, adults, men, women, those working, those not working, etc.).

After the community mapping activity, which I referenced in my first PACA post, we gathered information about the daily schedules and seasonal calendar of people in the community. For the daily schedules, we had various members of our host families provide a picture of their typical day through some simple questions – when do you wake up and go to bed? What do you do in the morning, afternoon, evening? When are you most busy? If you work, what are your working hours? What do you do over the weekend? The responses obviously vary for each person, but taken together, they can provide a general picture of what people are typically doing at a given time of day. Being aware of this will prove to be very useful when planning potential meetings, clubs, or any other projects – if you try to plan something at the time when most people are going to the souk (market), eating dinner, etc., attendance will probably be an issue.

For the seasonal calendar information, we gathered some family members and a local mul hanut (shop owner) for a general discussion about the year. We talked about things like Ramadan (and how people’s daily schedule changes during that month), other holidays, the seasons, and when the busy times of year are for different people – shop owners, students, etc. This is beneficial for similar reasons as the daily schedule – if you want to plan a leadership camp for students, you need to be aware of when they’re busy, when they’re out of school, and when a holiday might prevent them from attending. Our conversation also turned again to what people like about Merja as well as what they think needs to be done to improve the community. Related to what we discussed during community mapping, the people in attendance referenced a need for leisure spaces several times – particularly a need for a safe place for women to get together and/or play sports. Merja used to be known for its natural beauty – there’s a river that runs through one side of town, and people used to spend a lot of time near the river or just outdoors in general, enjoying the scenery or playing sports. This was especially true for women: since it’s not socially acceptable for them to sit in the local cafes that are filled with men, they would spend their social time sitting in the natural park setting that the outdoors provided. With all of the new development going on, however, most of the natural spaces have disappeared, leaving nowhere for people to pass their time outdoors aside from in the streets or in empty lots between partially-built apartment complexes. The participants also mentioned a need for a soccer team or field dedicated to girls, since many girls love to play soccer but often feel uncomfortable playing on the field dominated by boys.

Activities with youth: Turning the PA (participatory analysis) into the CA (community action):

This whole process of community analysis would be useless unless we actually followed through to the next steps: sharing the data gathered with our community and implementing projects based on the analysis. This is where things really started to get fun! Last week, we gathered a large group of youth (about sixty kids on average each day!) in the Dar Chebab for three days of activities based on Merja’s PACA information. The overall goal for the week was to engage the youth in some critical analysis about their community and guide them through the process of identifying needs, planning next steps, and implementing an idea. Though we’re pretty sure the youth hadn’t done many, if any, activities like these before, the week was a great success, and the kids seemed to really enjoy the chance to speak up about what matters to them.

The first day, we presented a poster we’d made of the information we’d gathered during the community mapping, daily schedule, and seasonal calendar activities. It was summarized into “assets,” “setbacks,” “needs,” and “next steps” – but the “next steps” category was left blank, open for the youth’s ideas about how to address some of the needs in their community. After talking with them about the poster, we all went on a community walk around Merja, asking the kids to think about what they saw – what’s good? What’s not so good? What’s missing? Who uses which resources and why? We were a little bit worried that some of the kids would get distracted on the walk and not focus on the task, but it went well for the most part. Most of the kids were focused on the goal of the walk, and some of the girls walking near me were pointing out really interesting things that I’d never noticed before. When we got back to the Dar Chebab, we facilitated a conversation about what we’d seen and, with some translation help from our LCF, made lists on the board of their thoughts regarding positives, negatives, and needs of the community. I was so blown away by the enthusiasm of the kids during the conversation – everywhere I looked, students were raising their hands high, visibly excited to have their voices heard. Though I couldn’t understand everything that was said until our LCF helped translate, I could hear the passion in their voices and see the excitement in their faces. They made long lists in each column, and we were so amazed by what we saw on the board at the end of the evening! The youth had made observations that none of the adults we’d talked to had mentioned, and it was clear that there was a lot they wanted to see for their community.

The next day, we continued with a goal-setting workshop, specifically focused on the needs they had identified the night before. We wanted to give the kids the skills and experience needed to take an identified need and create long, medium, and short-term goals in order to meet the larger goal. This is so important for everyone, but especially for kids, who often are bursting with good ideas but feel that it’s impossible because they don’t know where to start. We first reviewed all the needs they had identified, and then helped them select one to focus on based on what seemed to be both important and achievable. They chose to focus on creating more space outdoors for leisure, such as parks and football fields. We then split them up into small groups, and each group thought about 6 possible steps to attaining the larger goal. They were free to write whatever kinds of steps they could think of – short-term or long-term, small or large. They wrote each step on a separate sheet of paper, and afterwards we came back as a large group to discus. We had a long timeline on the wall, with marks indicating 1 week, 1 month, 6 months, 1 year, and 5 years, and asked them to place each step somewhere on the timeline, based on when it would take place in the larger picture. I was a bit nervous going into this activity, because I had only done it with college students during strategic planning for an organization on campus (thanks Kappa Kapps Psi, for the experience needed to do this!), so I didn’t know how it would transfer with younger kids. There were some in the room who didn’t seem to be very interested in the activity, and that could have been because the room was kind-of loud and crazy at some points during the group work, or because of age differences (there were a few kids there who were probably too young for something as demanding as this). Overall, though, the activity was awesome – a lot of the kids were super interested in the goal-setting process, and it was truly inspiring to see them so invested in their goal. When we were finished, the entire wall was filled with steps along the way to making their vision a reality, and I saw steps on the wall that I hadn’t even thought of myself!

Working in groups

The finished goals timeline

On the last day, we reviewed the goals timeline briefly and then got started on one of the first steps listed: cleaning up the trash and rocks in an already-available space for a park. There’s a makeshift soccer field in an empty lot behind the Dar Chebab, but there’s usually trash, rocks, a big weeds with thorns scattered about, making it a bit unsafe for the kids to play in. We took the kids out to the field and we all picked up trash, rocks, and some of the weeds in order to turn the makeshift park into a real safe place for leisure. We anticipated that a few kids might not be interested in the activity, both because it’s not entirely fun to pick up trash and rocks, and also because it was a really hot day. The vast majority of the kids participated, though, and did it with an energy and vigor that was really awesome! We sang songs, talked, and laughed while we cleaned, and by the end of the afternoon there was a difference in the field that everyone could see. We finished off the evening by playing some games in our newly-cleaned play area, and it seemed like the kids left feeling really accomplished with the work we’d done for the week.

To top the week off, I had a visit from a family friend of ours whom I’d met a few weeks before. She’s an awesome woman about my age, full of ambition and great ideas. Since we share similar interests in feminism, culture, and working for social change, I was already excited to see her – and little did I know that she was about to make my week! She asked about the activities we’d been doing with youth at the Dar Chebab, and after I told her all about it, she said that she wanted to take up the project after we go!! She said it was really important work, and that she wanted to take the initiative to hold meetings and continue with the work the youth had started. I was so excited that I could have cried – this is exactly why we do what we do! We’re not here to be the ones starting projects and finishing projects alone, only to leave after 2 years. We’re here to provide capacity-building skills, to help initiate positive change that’s led by community members and sustainable for years after we leave. This young woman’s desire to take what we’d started with the youth and run with it perfectly embodies that goal, and it reminds me why I came to Morocco in the first place. It is truly an inspiration that I’ll hold onto and remember during my entire service.

Whew! There was so much to tell, and I’m grateful for that! All of our experiences at the Dar Chebab during training have been wonderful, and I feel [at least somewhat] ready to start working with another group in my final site. Part of me wishes that we had more time to work with these kids, though, especially on their awesome timeline of goals. There’ve been rumors that a volunteer might get placed in Merja, and if that’s the case he or she will be able to hit the ground running with continuing this project and starting many others – especially given the opportunity to work with my friend as a counterpart! Our work here hasn’t been perfect by any means, but I can say that we’ve done at least some good, and, most importantly, that we may have started something that can continue long after we’re gone…and that’s something to write home about.