With many changes being made at the centre Amane, the past few months have been a very exciting time for MCT and FAPE. This month marks the fifth anniversary of the opening of the centre and with this milestone upon us we have taken the opportunity to evaluate and assess the many services we offer for the families we work with. We have come a long way in just five years and the experience we have taken from working closely with the local community in Taroudannt has taught us a great deal. We have developed a strong, solid base from which to push forward and progress the work, with the centre Amane acting as a lynchpin for all the activities that MCT and FAPE embark upon together. Our advocacy strategy that was born out of the work we have been doing at the centre for the last five years is developing in leaps and bounds; from the success of the regional conference on Identification papers last winter to the proposition of a national conference next year. The lessons we have learnt over the past five years underpin all other aspects of the work from the creation of a child protection system to the planned foster care research we hope to undertake early next year.

This period of strategy has allowed us to make changes to the structures and implementation of the services we provide and with it has brought new faces to the centre amane team. We now have a larger team than before led by Meryam Ayach our fantastic new centre director, four social workers driving forward the social work which supports all other services, as well as an administrator and the introduction of a dedicated in country fundraiser who has already begun generating funds in Morocco itself. We are still to recruit three new teachers to join and to complete the centre Amane team, all in all it’s an exciting time and the start of a new era for MCT and FAPE.