Green thumbs – AFCD Foundation

Eco Citizen Project

Mohcine — Thu, 30 Dec 2021 17:02:23 +0000

Eco Citizen Project

The Eco Citizen project was a one-year long-term project with a strong local impact. It targets all categories of inhabitants of Ait Ourir and consists of several phases, starting with raising awareness, practical workshops, and strengthening capacities regarding waste sorting towards recycling and recovery.

This project began in 2020 as a preparatory phase in which the AFCD Foundation team launched social media campaigns and created a variety of communication tools to raise awareness and develop the primary steps in Ait Ourir using a participatory approach.

The implementation phase began in 2021. It did not focus only on building the capacity of local NGOs and civil society actors, but also on training new committees to better represent the local population and develop alternative pathway proposals for better household waste management.

At the same time, citizen participation concentrated on how municipalities can better implement their plans using more participatory approaches that potentially lead to better local governance.

01. Problem analysis

Local residents, social dynamics, decision-makers, and stakeholders in Ait Ourir city describe waste management as a challenging problem. However, the lack of interactions between these factors produces unsatisfied outcomes.

This project used a participatory approach to discover plausible roots of chronic problems by focusing on what captures, shapes, and limits the attention of stakeholders and decision-makers in order to develop effective solutions.

02. Project Objectives

Engage the local population from Aït Ourir, local NGOs and civil society actors, and locally elected representatives in a participatory process to develop alternative solutions for waste management in their city.

To inform the local population and to raise awareness about the current waste management situation in Aït Ourir and its impacts.

To strengthen local NGOs’ capacities to mobilize and sensitize their respective communities about waste management issues in Aït Ourir.

To bring elected representatives and policymakers, civil society actors, and citizens together to discuss waste related environmental issues in Aït Ourir and to contribute to developing alternative solutions and waste management systems with a participatory approach.

03. Project Target Community

Local NGOs and civil society activists,
Policy makers in Ait Ourir,
Ait Ourir city council & Elected representatives
Aït Ourir population and community,
Students and young people,
Aspiring entrepreneurs,
Waste management stakeholders in Ait Ourir.

05. Relation with SDGs

Our project most likely contributes to fulfilling the UNs Sustainable Development Goals by standing for:

GOAL 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

GOAL 12: Responsible Consumption and Production

Project Activities

Activity 1 "Social Media Compaign"
Activity 2 " Development of Local Charter"
Activity 3: " 3 Workshops, and 2 Round tables "
Activity 4: " Youth Environmental Boot Camp "
Activity 5: " Local Waste Pickers-Forum in Ait Ourir "
Activity 6: " Cetizen- Elected Officials Boot Camp "

AL Houaz Province Festival of Environmental Film

admin — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 04:46:50 +0000

AL Houaz Province Festival of Environmental Film Project

Environmental festivals are becoming increasingly popular, and many NGOs that want to raise environmental awareness are using them to spread environmental conservation messages and raise awareness about the importance of solving environmental issues.

In collaboration with different partners, the AFCD Foundation organized ‘AL Houaz Province Festival of Environmental Film,’ third edition, under the theme of “Audiovisual at the Service of the Environment” from April 23 to 25, 2020, in Aït Ourir, with the participation of young directors representing cinema and environmental clubs as well as civil society associations in our province.

Throughout this festival and in parallel with the competition for beginner film makers, we attended screenings and debates of professional environmental films in the presence of their directors, workshops on sustainable development, and screenings of films by young people. We concluded discussions on the state of the environment in the Ait Ourir region, led by executives from the Marrakech regional environmental observatory, and with the active participation of citizens.

01. Project Objectives

The overriding objective is to contribute, through the media, to raising the awareness of officials at all levels and the general public of the need for effective protection of the environment.

Help the participants to acquire new concepts of the environment,
Create a space for raising public awareness, communication and competition between young directors of environmental films,
Create a benchmark event aimed at encouraging the production of films relating to the environment,
Train young people in the audio visual field,
Training in skills that aid in environmental preservation,
And encouraging participation in problem-solving.

Oxygen Project

admin — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 04:45:16 +0000

Oxygen Project

Awareness, Advocacy, and Action

In recent years, concerns for environmental initiatives and projects have become more common showing a growing willingness and urgency to create sustainable solutions in the province of Al Haouz.

This is a two years project which proposed connecting “top-down” officials and the “bottom-up” civic society by engaging them in a variety of collaborative workshops that directly deal with the topic of waste management.

By tapping into the large youth population that Al Haouz province and Morocco have to offer, we begun to lay the foundation for stronger community action in unison with government plans to allow for a more comprehensive and sustainable approach.

The project was built to help bring these concerns and problems to the forefront of citizens’ minds through education on the topics and current plans in their communities. And at the same time, this citizen participation shed light on how municipalities can better implement their plans.

This project was designed through an inclusive community planning, which effectively address the three prongs of sustainable development: economic viability, environmental sustainability, and social responsibility.

01. Problem analysis

One of the main issues for governments to properly address local challenges is because there are rarely any reliable networks for open communication between officials and locals. This project did not only focus on strengthening current committees but also expanding and creating new ones to better represent the local and regional demographics.

The meetings were held monthly to update one another on the current activities, workshops, and projects occuring in the province. The committee members were as extensions of their respective groups, representing their communities’s needs and objectives to effectively gain and distribute resources throughout the Al Haouz province.

02. Project Objectives

Our main objectives are:

Raise Awareness through workshops in six cluster areas: Tahannaout, Ait Ourir, Touama, Asni, Amzmiz, and Tameslouht.
Strenthening the Capacities’ of civic society within these six clusters.
Activating Local Government committees.