This past Monday, Nov 30th, MCT and FAPE combined expertise with the Université Ibn Zohr’s Law Department faculty in a mini-conference on Fostering in Morocco at UIZ in Agadir. This event marked the first training session with the UIZ’s Masters in Family Law students; over five sessions, MCT staff and visiting experts will train the students in qualitative research methods, ethics, and data analysis, to prepare them to possibly participate as research assistants in MCT’s upcoming Fostering research project.
Presentations at the session included Hannah Bradley, who spoke about MCT’s current fostering research project, Abdellah Soussi, who spoke about the Kefala system of adopting “abandoned” children, Lynette Swanson, who spoke about the development of fostering in the UK, and Professor Kamal Belherkate, who spoke of fostering’s implications in Islamic law. The event was also attended by representatives from local NGO’s and other UIZ students; the ensemble engaged positively with all speakers, and everyone is energized to move forward with the training, and with developing a fostering program tailored to Morocco’s cultural context.
In September, the UIZ’s Family Law Research Laboratory signed a formal partnership with MCT. MCT’s current research project “The views of children and their carers in southern Morocco in relation to non-kin foster care” will use Participative Action Research to further investigate the challenges and particularities of a future Moroccan Foster-Care program. We look forward to upcoming sessions with UIZ students, and to the beginning of fieldwork after the New Year.