This past week, various members of our team ran a training at a local secondary school in Taroudannt on working with street-connected children. A real sign of Centre Afaq’s presence within the local community, the team were delighted to receive an invitation from the school director at Besatine to run a training for all of its staff!

Led by the president of our NGO partner Groupe Maroc Horizons (GMH), the training included presentations from various team members at Centre Afaq to share ways of working with street-connected children in a holistic approach. Karima, the centre manager, provided background on the work of the Centre Afaq team. One of the other presenters was Soumiya, the teacher in our education support programme who has built relationships with local schools in her visits to schools to have one-to-one meetings concerning individual students. Much of her work involves working in partnership with the children’s school teachers to give context to possible attendance, behaviour or concentration problems in the classroom. Mohamed, a member of the social work team at Centre Afaq, also shared his experience and approach working from a social centre and visiting homes and community actors, like schools.

The underlining message of the team’s training was best practice of child protection. MCT’s director, Dr Chris Hands, was able to join the team during his visit to Taroudannt and shared lessons learned in child protection in the UK. He identified the main challenge as that of communication between people responsible to ensure child protection, like social workers and teachers. A challenge presented across the world, vital communication links in child protection in the Taroudannt city and region are being built and strengthened by the Centre Afaq team.