What does the programme involve?
The programme operates on the basis of learning and fundrasing in order to help underdeveloped schools in Morocco.
Each school group in Ireland, north and south responds in kind to the video presentations, posters and poems made by the participating school groups in english and french!
We take all this project material to the Moroccan schools involved, working on a year programme to enable the students there to produce their own video presentations, posters, poems and written messages.
We then return to Morocco we will show the schools here the feedback from the Moroccan schools alike.
The “magic ingredient” in the project is the video presentation which each class ultimately gets to make: students communicate on three themes - personal interests and local identities; daily realities and issues relating to poverty; final messages expressing the relevance of universal values and rights to all young people.
The primary resources for promoting the project objectives are therefore produced by the students themselves. We believe this the transferable and re-generative aspect of such exchanges demonstrate and optimise the essential qualities of peer-learning.
How does the programme slot into the school year?
The project is scheduled into the school year as follows:
- September through December or January: preparatory module in schools in the USA.
- February through March: preparatory module in schools in English or French.
- Depending on our trip date: final feedback sessions in schools in the USA.
Awareness Days We also encourage each group to organise an Awareness Day at their school. This simply involves setting up information sheets on display boards and table stands so as to encourage other students to have their hands sketched on colour A4 sheets: they would write on their “hand poster” a value from the project (peace, freedom, respect, dignity etc.) and their first name and age. As with the other class posters made by the participant school groups, these “hand posters” are subsequently posted up on the classroom walls of the schools in English and French. The goal is to collect as much as we can!
Visits to the shools you have been helping
We would like to arrange for a select number of students to come on an few-days visit to Morocco, accompanied by one of their respective teachers.
The visiting students are hosted by families of Moroccan students.
The trips are a vital component of the project, helping our students to fully ynderstand the situation in the country they will be helping.
The Moroccan trip is especially exciting: apart from visiting the schools, the visiting groups are also be taken around Nationalist and Loyalist areas.