Despite fully running for only less than six months, the Street Children Project has already begun incorporating new project strands and working with more people in its aim to achieve sustainable development for families in Taroudannt. Project Coordinator Nicola Hands is currently on site in Morocco and helping to facilitate the teamwork of the Taroudannt and London teams on fantastic new aspects of the project.
Plans are underway for a sports project that will run out of our very own space adjacent to the street children centre. We hope to be able to provide a regular and safe place for the children to spend their free time enjoying different sports activities. Also, plans have been agreed for a creche & pre-school project to better help some of the families with children under five years old. More news to come, but certainly an exciting period of expansion within the community!
Of course, the hard work of the social workers – Badiaa, Khalid, Mohamed – continues in Taroudannt to help better the children’s home, school, and work situations. This week, two children are receiving their identification papers, giving them legal existences, which opens doors to state schools and jobs. One individual is 18 years-old, so he can now seek employment. The social work team has been spending a lot of time working with all of the families in their unique situations to find solutions to difficult situations. For example, one boy and his younger sister have just been reunited after being split between the mother’s home in Taroudannt and their grandmother’s home in a village in the mountains.
The centre is certainly very busy with 26 kids regularly coming to homework support run by teacher Abdelkarim. This has pushed a lot of the children to return back to school. Having fun is extremely important as well! A lot of the children are enjoying immensely roller blades kindly donated to the centre.
More to come about Nicola’s visit in Taroudannt!