High Atlas Foundation

Sami’s Project, initiated in 2011, seeks to enhance the education system by creating green spaces through supplying and planting trees at local schools in predominantly rural communities. The green spaces aim to transform students into environmental stewards, in which they cultivate a connectedness to their environment, while building innovative agricultural techniques to support them in their future endeavors. These agricultural skills include nursery management, organic certification, carbon offset monitoring, and product processing. The concentration on organic agriculture fosters an increasingly competitive market that generates sustainable revenue for local schools and families.

Inspired by Sami El Kouhen, who passed away at three years old amidst his struggle with cancer, the project maintains his admirable devotion and gratitude for the environment around him. Sami’s father, a key-figure in the creation of Sami’s Project, expresses deep gratitude towards its ability to fulfill his son’s dreams manifested through the vibrant passion and smiles of the impacted children.

The sustainable development project additionally focuses on developing any lacking infrastructure that may be absent in poor, rural communities, including clean water systems, bathrooms and classrooms. Investment in accessible bathrooms and clean drinking water will not only reduce health and sanitation risks for children but also increase attendance, decrease dropout rates, and secure a safer and more comfortable learning environment for Morocco’s future leaders. Forming a more hygienic learning environment increases accessibility to education for girls, a vital contributor to women’s empowerment.

Morocco’s Ministry of Agriculture estimated one billion trees are needed to break the poverty cycle affecting farming families as they currently struggle to transition to more lucrative cash crops and to grow nurseries. Nurseries must be created for Morocco to generate the trees required to lift its inhabitants out of poverty. However, farming families are concerned about risk as they make the transition from barley and corn--even as it keeps them in poverty--to more lucrative cash crops. The High Atlas Foundation has 15 nurseries in five provinces of Morocco, where they produce varieties of organic fruit trees, forestry trees, and herbal and wild medicinal plants. Trees include; almond, Argan, carob, cherry, fig, grape, lemon, olive, pomegranate, quince, and walnut. Plants also include Calendula officinalis. Planting trees helps the environment, builds forestry, produces food and a source of income for families, connect students and communities with nature, and promote organic green growth. HAF provides a good model that is transferable beyond Morocco for green organic growth and development.

Although local villagers rank water supply as a priority, they lack the institutional and material capacities to effectively implement projects and cooperate with government agencies and NGOs. Partnerships between HAF and village-level institutions, Moroccan NGOs, and government ministries lead to the construction essential infrastructures for safe and accessible drinking water. Concurrent sessions raise awareness and improve responses to larger, underlying health issues, as well as focusing on the enhancement of local development and organizational capacities through the establishment and/or training of village associations. Both infrastructure construction and workshops complement each other to ensure the proper operation and continual maintenance of water systems, as well as the knowledge, means and incentives to initiate other community-led development actions and effectively collaborate with outside government agencies and development organizations. The relationships and experience resulting from collaboration between local, regional, and international partners allow the project to serve as a model that can be replicated in other areas lacking potable water throughout Morocco.

An embodiment of Morocco’s integrated development approach is its way to preserve its diverse cultures. Morocco’s vision is that cultural activities should be advanced in integration with people’s development. HAF’s cultural projects critically move forward human development, in education, livelihoods, the environment, and with people in remote places.

First, HAF facilitates the lending of vacant land adjoining historic Jewish burial sites in order to establish nurseries. The trees are distributed to and grown by neighboring Muslim farming families. This act both meets a development priority and is a notable act of interfaith. We piloted the tree nursery phase, which resulted in the cultivation of 120,000 almond, fig, pomegranate and lemon trees. The experience helped HAF be granted seven plots of land nearby Jewish cemeteries; we can now strive for growing organic nurseries on a national scale. At scale, tens of millions of seeds will be planted every year and a better life afforded to marginalized communities. Moreover, we can advance on the later agricultural phases, including certifying organic the product for greater revenue for farmers, and building their cooperatives.

Second, In Essaouira in 2013, HAF held a conference to present the results of its one-year preservation and education program for the cemeteries of the three religions. The project trained caretakers in good practices, overseen cleaning and planting activities with local community members, organized awareness-raising events with local people, integrated over 400 individual students and schoolchildren into educational and practical activities around cultural knowledge preserved by the cemeteries, and worked with over 120 members of local civil society. The project was initiated by HAF and its partners and funded by the Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation and Essaouira Mogador.