In recent years Morocco has embarked on a programme to improve the literacy of its rural population. Many children in the countryside come from extremely poor families, and need to walk several kilometres a day to reach the nearest school. Economic pressures can force families to push their children towards tasks like goat herding, rather than persevering with their education – especially when rainfall is low and the harvests bad. So drop-out rates are high.
We are now collecting books and other resources (paper, pens, footballs etc) to donate to a school about 20km inland of Essaouira for the 2009/10 academic year. If you’re interested in helping, please get in touch.
Here’s a photo from a recent visit we arranged to the school – for more, visit our Flickr pages.