Near East Foundation

People We Serve

Community Profile: High Atlas Villages

In the remote Moroccan mountain village of Tamzrite, 13-year old Mohamed Angmar and his 8-year old sister, stayed at home to help support the family by working in the fields and gathering wood. Their parents had difficulty finding money for necessary school supplies and limited awareness of the value of education. As a result, Mohamed attended primary school sporadically and his sister not at all.

Berber communities settled in the High Atlas Mountains of southern Morocco during French colonization. Their land was isolated by steep gorges, dry and barren terrain and limited access to transport. They lived there by basic farming and animal husbandry, traveling only to the nearest market to barter goods. They sent their eldest sons for lessons at the local mosque, but otherwise, their children did not attend school. In this way, they maintained their traditional lifestyle and were largely forgotten, while the rest of Morocco modernized. The separation was intensified by their linguistic and ethnic heritage. Villagers, who predominately speak one of more than a dozen Berber languages, were unable to keep up with the rest of Morocco, where business, media and administration are conducted in Arabic and French. Centuries of isolation and limited access to information and resources thus made many communities insular and resistant to change.

Today, villages average 800 inhabitants in a region lacking adequate roads, water supply and electrification. Families live on less than $10 a month in small mud-and-rock houses with traditional latrines. Primary education is free and compulsory, but most schools are in disrepair and lack funding to rebuild, as well as essential school supplies and teaching materials. Low school attendance has resulted in an illiteracy rate of 90%, decreased access to jobs, and increased vulnerability to exploitation, especially for girls. They traditionally spend hours each day collecting wood for cooking and are not expected even to go into schools.

NEF first began working in these Berber villages in 1987. It helped one community to establish a goat cheese cooperative as part of a family nutrition project and its microcredit work supported weaving and beekeeping. Adult literacy programs helped create women’s committees that taught health skills. In 1997, NEF began focusing on promoting village associations to help villages organize and build infrastructure.

In 2004, NEF determined that enhancing primary education offered an opportunity to reduce poverty and promote gender equality. It started a three-year program for school improvement and increased attendance in 21 rural villages in the High Atlas Mountains. NEF’s community-based program consists of establishing parent-teacher councils and guiding their initiatives in and outside of schools.

Councils include parents, teachers, school directors, women leaders, and local elected officials. Women leaders contribute significantly to the decision-making and implementation of council-led initiatives. To build awareness, councils convene community meetings and seek to inform parents of the value of education for their daughters and sons. They encourage parents to sign a written commitment to send their kids to primary school; in exchange, families receive assistance with school supplies and membership to the local parent-teacher council. In the words of school director, Abdelmajid Ouldhamra, “before the community was closed and resistant to change, now they are calm and open to new ideas. They want what is best for their children’s future.”

Councils also focused on improving conditions in the schools, using funds earned from council-organized activities, including rent received from housing for teachers, beekeeping for honey making, and mechanized grinding of wheat. NEF also encouraged families to use ceramic stoves for cooking, which reduced the amount of wood needed and thus freed girls to attend school; women and their daughters also suffered much less lung and eye infections, since the stoves reduced indoor smoke.

For Mohamed and his sister everything has changed, “In the past (we) often stayed at home, particularly when it was cold. There was no heat in the schools. The (school) rooms were empty and dirty. The teacher was often absent. No one seemed to care. There was little for us to do. When the project started, my mother told us she wanted us in school every day. At school, I found that things were changing. (The) teacher was there on most days and we had new books and paper to write on. When I took my work home, my parents were proud of me. I felt like I was doing something and wanted to go back. I want to finish school. Maybe I can even continue on to secondary school in the town nearby.”

NEF’s program in the High Atlas Mountains has led to the establishment of 27 parent-teacher councils working with more than 3,000 students in 21 schools. The number of women involved in community-led initiatives and parent-teacher councils increased by 80%. School attendance for girls has risen from as low as zero to 100%, and the rate at which students remain in school and graduate has increased to 98%. In the seven years since this work began, NEF has expanded the initiative to 114 communities across central and southern Morocco. We have reached a total of 16,000 students, over half of them now girls, in 114 communities.

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