Planting future stems: Innovative employability skills

Fulfilling Moroccan youth’s academic success and employability through applied STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) curricula and improved school infrastructure.

Morocco’s schools have the potential to bring the country’s efforts towards green growth and bottom-up development into fruition. However, there is also a serious need, particularly in rural places, for improved school environments that enable students to thrive. For example, many schools do not have accessible water and bathrooms, consequently resulting in increases in irregular attendance and thus high dropout rates, especially among female students. Our proposed project joins students, teachers and administrators, communities, and civil and governmental partners to strategize and implement solutions to educational and employability barriers--including inadequate learning environments that deter school attendance, retention, and academic success--affecting youths’ readiness for and participation in the modern workforce. We will achieve this through school infrastructure improvement (e.g., water and sanitation, tree nurseries, libraries, and Geographic Information System computer labs) as well as through an innovative approach encompassing applied and collaborative learning in the green sector (organic agriculture and carbon offset monitoring).

This program intertwines science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and the focus themes of career counseling and exposure, extracurricular activities (i.e., girls and boys clubs), as well as multipurpose rooms with a real world application in the green sector. The major objectives of this proposed project are: 1) Enhance the high-value employability skills of Moroccan secondary and high school students by providing them with innovative practical training that inspires them to consider and achieve their career goals. 2) Establish and/or rehabilitate school infrastructure and equipment (i.e., GIS labs, libraries, water systems, and bathrooms) to provide inclusive, hygienic, and high-quality learning environments. 3) Improve the workforce readiness of youth to champion Morocco’s efforts toward green organic growth and bottom-up development. 4) Enrich communities and its environment with organic plants and trees that provide sustainable way of life utilizing modern green science and technology. 5) Create an inclusive educational and school community model that is replicable within and beyond Morocco.

While considering the necessary funding of both the infrastructure built and its long-term maintenance, revenue will be generated with organic farming and the commercializing of carbon credits. Communities that both develop their own sustainable agriculture and have students entering the green sector workforce have greater potential to earn income. The nurseries also supply harvests and products that will generate revenue over time. The skills and capacities reinforced and learned provide the long-term, continuous training that is required for sustainability. Participants-turned-facilitators through experiential training guarantee their communities short- and long-term benefits that significantly improve quality of life. For instance, the nursery ensures sustainable food and livelihood security; safe drinking water and hygienic bathrooms reduces health risks and empowers both female and male children to attend school; and academic spaces/resources (i.e., libraries, computer labs, software, etc.) prepares generations of Moroccan youth for employability that brings genuine satisfaction, and economic success. This project demonstrates improved quality, access, and relevance of learning, which will ultimately increase the transformative change experienced by Moroccan youth and society.

Innovation of this project lies in its merger of participatory planning, STEM instruction, and the direct utility of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology. The activity matrix targets youth through applied learning in the high market green sector, thus preparing students for college, careers, and proactive citizenship. Students learn STEM concepts through GIS, green projects, organic agriculture, participatory dialogue while promoting civic engagement, soft skills, entrepreneurial thinking, gender analysis, and youth development planning and action. These skills and sectors are highly valued in Morocco due to national educational, family, and sustainable development frameworks that require and reward the involved capacities.

The curriculum we created incorporates GIS tools, utilizing physical and social data mapping to assist natural resource planning and analysis of human development and environmental needs and opportunities. The use of technological equipment (computers and software) and the creating and management of multipurpose spaces (school libraries and computer labs) in order to foster innovation is integral to our solution. Further, this project addresses information and communication technology by incorporating connectivity, including Internet access and applying GIS to real-world subjects that are relevant to STEM content.

• Build capacities surrounding STEM content via experiential training in green sector opportunities and GIS tools

• Build nurseries (land preparation and water efficient irrigation)

• Plant organic and endemic seeds (fruit and forestry trees and wild medicinal plants)

• Graft trees

• Build and equip computer labs and libraries

• School-based and community participatory planning meetings for sustainable local projects

• Implement activities identified and prioritized during school planning meetings

• Creation of environmental clubs, emphasizing girls participation

• Adapt STEM, environmental, and project planning curriculum to Moroccan context

  • Conduct training workshops for teachers

  • Teachers train students

  • Students carry out self-designed projects utilizing environmental management and technological capacities

The project’s promotion of Advanced Trainers enables school administrations to continue training other teachers and more students. School communities will have organic product to sell and therefore potential funding for future sustainable projects. The skills learned provide long-term capacity building that promotes sustainability. For instance, maintaining academic spaces and resources (libraries and computer labs) prepares future generations of youth for employability and economic success. Finally, Moroccan schools—in the context of the nation’s frameworks to promote the green sector and youth participation—are eager to engage in this initiative, thus putting HAF in a position to mobilize this project in new areas. 

The project works with Morocco’s Ministry of Education and schools to identify locations that are disadvantaged; they are rural and in the Marrakech region. The productive partnerships and networks reinforced through this project across the various sectors and tiers—government, civil, university, private, public, national, and local—serve as a space for governmental buy-in, sharing of best practices, and supporting resource mobilization for expansion. The strong network of trained persons that will be created in addition to the national demand for skills in the green sector and for promoting youth employability, provide opportunities to reach beneficiaries.

HAF already supports communities with organic farming with the goal to generate income for local communities with competitive profit. In the first three months of 2018, HAF worked across 23 provinces with 156 schools - involving 19,000 students – to plant 16,763 trees. Since 2013, HAF conducted interactive environmental activities and planted approximately 33,000 trees with nearly 350 schools. A successful example of income generated from organic agriculture with school communities is in the Rhamna province where the Groupe des écoles Nzalt Laadm school utilized the revenue generated by olive trees HAF planted to deepen their water well.

This project will target 12 schools mostly in rural areas in the Marrakech, Safi, Chichaoua, and Essaouira provinces - involving 7,921 students and 293 teachers. Community members will benefit academically, economically, and environmentally throughout and beyond this project due to the sustainability of the STEM and environment curricula, gender-inclusive school infrastructure, participatory training and workshops, and organic agriculture. HAF’s significant previous experience with these populations in these regions in addition to our formal partnerships with government agencies, NGOs, local cooperatives and associations, and community leaders, present the real opportunity for continuously refining and achieving the project’s impact.

HAF’s Moroccan and international project staff is highly skilled in facilitating community planning and implementing projects across various sectors and in multicultural settings. Yossef Ben-Meir, co-founder and President, has written and published nine essays in peer review journals and 80 articles in publications in approximately 70 countries, on strategies for sustainable development in Africa and the Middle East. HAF’s past partners for our youth initiatives include: the American School of Marrakech, Earth Day Network, Ecosia, Foundation OCP, G4S North and West Africa, Kahina Giving Beauty, International Foundation, PaperSeed, Trees for Life, and the Swiss Embassy (Rabat).

In addition to securing grants and receiving financial gifts (approximately 500 individual donors have supported HAF’s school project), the trees and plants created by the nurseries are a major source of revenue. This revenue will be generated in three ways: the first is the sale of trees and plants to the regions’ farmers. Even as these trees will be sold at $0.20 each and their market value is closer to $1.00, this guarantees their purchase due to the exorbitant demand by farming communities. The second way is the planting of the trees at the schools. Planting organic fruit trees (e.g., almond, walnut, cherry, carob, fig, pomegranate, lemon, argan, and olive) will be a source of revenue that will be dedicated to advancing the school environment as well as relieving the critical needs (such as for young people with disabilities) of individual students so that they excel academically. Finally, students will learn the process of monitoring and certifying trees for their offsets of carbon; these credits have value in national and international markets. HAF will assist in their sale and dedicate that revenue to maintaining and expanding this project.

Solve’s Work for the Future challenge has a scope that connects seamlessly with this Moroccan solution for building the employability of disadvantaged youth. Morocco has created a context for the green sector to thrive and for communities to drive the change they seek. However, youth need to learn new skills and bring technological tools to bear in order to fulfill both the great possibilities provided by the nation and those that have come about from globalization. Solve and HAF are dedicated to providing opportunity for people disaffected by economies in transition as well as rural places pressured by urbanization.

Barriers include having the necessary funding to cover the costs for school infrastructure construction and/or rehabilitation and equipment.
For example, two of the 12 targeted schools reported needing
improvement/repair in electricity; the majority (83%) of schools lack
irrigation and 33% do not have access to water. Further, almost all
(92%) have a library, but, of those schools, eight reported needing
materials; additional classrooms and/or a computer lab are not available
in some (25%) schools. Lastly, computers are available in most (83%)
schools, however, two of those schools reported needing more.