Youth empowerment – AFCD Foundation

Leadership Lab 2.0

admin — Sat, 18 Nov 2023 10:11:41 +0000

Leadership Lab 2.0 project

Entrepreneurship in the United States embodies quintessential American qualities, such as an inventive spirit and dynamic energy. The nation has cultivated a robust entrepreneurial environment that consistently attracts individuals from across the globe. Whether it’s the tech giants of Silicon Valley or the financial powerhouses on Wall Street, the USA provides a fertile landscape for entrepreneurs and startups to flourish.

The entrepreneurial ethos deeply permeates American society, creating a culture that reveres innovation and embraces risk-taking. This cultural foundation significantly contributes to the triumph of the US entrepreneurial ecosystem, empowering entrepreneurs to learn from setbacks and refine their ideas. The society not only applauds success stories but also regards failure as a valuable learning experience. This cultural milieu nurtures an atmosphere where individuals are motivated to chase their entrepreneurial dreams, thereby enhancing the overall vitality of the ecosystem.

01. The importance of cultural diversity

Entrepreneurship in Morocco presents a dynamic interplay of challenges and prospects, intricately shaped by the nation’s economic, cultural, and regulatory dynamics. The entrepreneurial fabric of Morocco is notably impacted by a substantial youth demographic, as a growing number of young Moroccans actively engage in entrepreneurship, motivated by a quest for independence, a drive for innovation, and the exploration of novel opportunities. While traditional business models and family enterprises hold cultural significance in Morocco, there is a shifting mindset that increasingly values innovation and a willingness to take risks, particularly evident among the younger generation. This evolving perspective reflects a departure from conventional norms towards a more progressive and entrepreneurial outlook.

AFCD aims to use the best practices developed in the U.S. entrepreneurial system and the principles of participatory democracy to build the knowledge and capacity of the youth selected to participate in the Leadership Lab civic engagement and entrepreneurship training tracks.

02. Project Summary

The Leadership Lab, a dynamic year-long program, aims to empower 60 emerging leaders and young entrepreneurs (ages 18-30) across Morocco. Through immersive training, networking, and a robust multi-stakeholder approach infused with U.S. entrepreneurial best practices, the program is a catalyst for knowledge and capacity building. Launched at The Moroccan American Leadership Forum and facilitated by the AFCD Foundation, the program unfolds with a transformative three-month Online Training and a high-impact Entrepreneurship & Civic Engagement Boot Camp. The climax is the Pitching Competition and Impact Hackathon, providing a pivotal platform for entrepreneurs to secure seed funding while igniting innovative solutions to local challenges by civil activists. This initiative, underscored by mentorship, aspires to cultivate influential change-makers, propelling a wave of transformation across diverse fields in Morocco.

03. Leadership Lab in Numbers

60 Participants
12 months of training
6 Mentors for 10 participants
4 grants winners

04. Project Activities

The year-long duration of The Leadership Lab program ensures a year brimming with impactful activities. Committed to the cause, The Leadership Lab is dedicated to formulating and executing an extensive program, providing participants with a wealth of opportunities to cultivate essential leadership skills.

To give the participants the opportunity the hone their communication skills
To enhance the acceptance of others, hence tolerance, and anchoring the positive learnability
To raise the participant’s awareness on the subject matter under the umbrella of “Little diversity hurts no one “

05. Relation with sustainable development goals

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

GOAL 4: Quality Education

GOAL 5: Gender Equality

GOAL 16: Peace and Justice Strong Institutions

GOAL 10: Reduced Inequality

Dialogue Me Project

admin — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 07:26:24 +0000

Dialogue Me Project

In the past few years, Morocco has seen many changes that revealed that Moroccan society was not ready for the waves of ideas and challenges the Arab Spring brought with it. The MENA uprisings have lifted the veil on many issues, allowing minorities to finally express their views.

Religious minorities, Sub-Saharan immigrants, and Amazigh (Berbers) have come to realize that it is time to express themselves freely and make the world hear them. These changes have also paved the way for extremists and fundamentalists to use their divisive rhetoric and conspiracy theories to spread fear and negativism among these groups.

Unfortunately, Morocco was not, and still is not, equipped with the right mechanisms to bring Moroccan society together without favoring one group over the other. We, Moroccans, have to understand that democracy cannot be instilled without freedom, and there is much work to be done in this regard.

With that being said, the AFCD Foundation developed a project called “Dialogue Me” that tackles the issues mentioned above. The AFCD Foundation organized a series of workshops and trainings for participants from all over Morocco to develop a series of civic education principles and strategies. The participants learnt how to facilitate a group and foster an understanding of democratic values.

01. Project background

Ait Ourir is based in southern Morocco, close to Marrakesh. It is a big town, with a population of about 40,000 people. Concurrent with its size, Ait Ourir has many spaces for youth, including a youth center, dozens of youth associations, several schools, an athletic field, and many clubs.

However, high rates of youth unemployment, dissatisfaction with life outside of Morocco’s larger cities, lack of confidence, and other factors contribute to lower participation rates in civil society organizations.

In addition, many initiatives focus on students and youth who already have reputations as high achievers. Dialogue me seeks to engage youth who have not previously been active in NGOs and civil society activities, while using the skills of these high achievers as mentors and trainers.

02. Project Implementation

The implementation would take place over a period of 3 months. After receiving funds, AFCD and will work together to prepare and coordinate the logistics of the trainings, develop content, reach out to key leaders for recruitment, select 3 trainers from the civic education program Alumni, and then select 20 participants from four regions of Morocco.

Trainers will facilitate a series of four workshops with the support of AFCD organization and Goeth Institute. The four workshops will cover topics such as tolerance, democracy building, identity and acceptance, and dialogue in order to enable youth to prepare projects to help solve identified community problems.

After the workshops are completed, each group of youth, along with their mentor, will work on a community project. Youth will present their projects at the end of the project and then AFCD will focus on monitoring and will follow up.

03. Capacity Building

Dialogue me would build capacity through the training and facilitation of 20 trainees. These trainees will be selected youth who are already active in local NGOs and community projects.

In addition, the initial pool of participants will involve 30 youth (to be further culled to 20). Whomever is not initially selected for the first round of training will be selected for the second round of the project, ensuring interest and continued participation.

03. Sustainability

Dialogue me aims to empower young people to solve problems within their own communities. By using a “training-of-trainers” (TOT) model and the use of local mentors, the project will ensure that there are always qualified young people to carry on the work.

Furthermore, the main objective of the program is to develop the capacity of each individual participant so that they will initiate their own projects with minimal assistance in the future.

04. Objectives

Train trainers for civic education and coexistence to promote democracy as way of life.
Introduce notions of tolerance, democracy, identity, and acceptance. The participants will be provided with a pedagogical approach to solve conflicts democratically.
Equip the participants with the tools to run training workshops in the field of citizenship values and the fields of their expertise.

03. Target community

Participants between 25 to 35 years old.
30 participants from four major cities in Morocco: Tangier, Rabat, Agadir, and Marrakech.
The participants are professionals of different fields: journalists, civil society activists, and teachers.

Project Activities

Let’s Dialogue

admin — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 07:18:58 +0000

Let’s Dialogue project

In the light of the tense atmosphere and the dividedness that the world is witnessing, which are making people all over the globe feel deprived and destitute, and also making them feel that they have no say in the world’s events, The AFCD Foundation believed in the impactful role of bringing people to the table in order to voice their concerns as well as their visions of their communities and the way they want to see their societies.

This project was a series of online meetings between participants from all over the world with different backgrounds and ethnicities, where the host put them in subject-related scenarios to enhance their acceptance of others. They were also part of online workshops to develop and learn more about some strategies to follow when bridging between cultures to achieve a better understanding between people.

Moreover, the Dialogue Me Project focused on how to bring about positive and tangible change in the way they tackle the notion of “the Other.” As a result of this project, young participants have become more open to dialogue, as it’s one of the many good and beneficial ways to expand their horizons to include the rest of the world.

01. The Importance of Cultural Diversity

One of the most obvious reasons behind almost every conflict in the world is cultural misunderstanding, as well as an inability to accept the other, no matter how different he is. The cleavages between cultures are a critical matter for achieving peace and stability. Cultural diversity is a driving force for development as well, not only on the social scale but also on the economic one.

All of this can be achieved through dialogue, which is indeed a necessity nowadays in our changing, distinguished world. Dialogue can help overcome prejudice and create an understanding of other people’s perspectives.

02. Religious and cultural Diversity

Lack of tolerance has always been a key reason behind conflicts and dangerous misunderstandings worldwide. The difference has always been scary. Yet, it is undeniable that cultural diversity and religious pluralism are driving forces for development as well, not only on the social scale, but also on the economic one.

To achieve the above-mentioned endeavors, we, at the AFCD Foundation, would like to approach things like we always do, based on two approaches: the Gender Transformative Approach (GTA) and the human rights-based approach. We would invite associations and civil society activists who are active in defending and campaigning for the rights of minorities in Morocco.

03. Problem analysis

We notice nowadays that the rate of hate crimes and speech is tangibly increasing in different spots of the world, which is directly influencing the coming generations. Young people are not seen as a resource for change if they don’t take action to intervene. That is exactly why we are urged to solve this problem.

04. Objectives

The main objective of this training was to provide a safe space for these participants to learn how to facilitate a group and foster an understanding of democratic values. Our main objectives are:

To give the participants the opportunity to hone their communication skills,

To increase acceptance of others, and thus tolerance, and to establish positive learnability.

To raise the participant’s awareness of the subject matter under the umbrella of “little diversity hurts no one”

05. Relation with sustainable development goals

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

GOAL 4: Quality Education

GOAL 5: Gender Equality

GOAL 16: Peace and Justice Strong Institutions

GOAL 10: Reduced Inequality

Project Activities

Youth First Project

admin — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 07:16:27 +0000

Youth First Project

With the Partnership Development, we aimed to make a strategy for developing the partnership with a special focus on the mobilization of youth and gender equality.

As part of the partnership development, we met with five different regional organizations to discuss replicating the project in their community (smaller villages around Ait Ourir with fewer opportunities for youth mobilization).

Similar organizations in the region asked AFCD about the potential of duplicating the project idea in their community (similar cities and challenges to those in Ait Ourir). The project development therefore also had a focus on how the project could expand in the area and how we could build a network between the different cities.

Thus, the Partnership Development searched for how we could duplicate the idea from the pilot project, and we met with the 5 organizations to discuss and debate the current project, obstacles, and challenges to see how we could coordinate and plan a coherent program – a partnership project.

The Partnership Development has responded, to a large extent, to the aim and all activities were carried out as planned.

01. Project Activities

The first part of the agenda was to get through 2 workshops, which the Danish youth facilitated. The Moroccan participants were split into groups of youth who are part of the Youth First program and therefore have experienced the project by themselves.

The first workshop was about capacity building and what we have learned from the Pilot Project, and the second was about discussing mobilization of gender equality. It was a good opportunity to discuss the problems with mobilization (maybe the internet isn’t enough) and how to secure equal access to participate. AFCD and RUD had a meeting with the five potentials, where we discussed Youth First with workshops, mentoring, and community actions and experiences.

The five villages are located around Ait Ourir (between 5 and 20 km). They have fewer activities and possibilities than in Ait Ourir. The inhabitants have challenging living conditions as there are a lot of school dropout cases, and illiteracy is a huge problem. There isn’t a tradition for working with youth empowerment in the villages, that’s why there is a need for working with this target group, and Youth First could be the method to engage and mobilize them within local projects.

02. Project Objectives

The objectives of the Partnership Development were to develop new visions for the partnership and to find out which direction we wanted further cooperation to go in. This project is basically meant to invigorate youth involvement in Ait Ourir, which was our first collaboration after Partner Identification and the Preparatory Study. The Pilot Project is completed.

While the Pilot Project was lacking towards the end, the partnership wanted some answers to questions about a future partnership:

What should be done subsequently, i.e., when the pilot project is completed?

What ideas do we have for future partnerships?

What are our respective organizations capable of?

World Affairs Challenge Virtual Exchange

admin — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 07:12:33 +0000

World Affairs Challenge Virtual Exchange

AFCD Foundation team leaders strongly believe that young people can turn their ideas into real action, especially while working cross-culturally. It is immensely powerful and transformative, setting them on a path toward meaningful global citizenship and community involvement.

The J. Christopher Stevens Virtual Exchange Initiative Program, administered by The Aspen Institute and funded by the U.S. Department of State, has awarded a grant to World Denver to design and implement a virtual exchange program between high school-aged students in Colorado and students in the Middle East/North Africa region called the World Affairs Challenge Virtual Exchange (WACVE).

We hosted the World Affairs Challenge Virtual Exchange in partnership with WorldDenver. It is a 10-week exchange program between students from North Africa, the Middle East, and the state of Colorado who are aged 14–17 and are interested in working with peers from around the world to practice leadership development, cross-cultural communication, and project management.

01. Project Straegy

The program is in the form of a ten-week exchange supervised by supportive facilitators, a team of peers in two countries, and the availability of expert guidance from World Denver and its partners. It’s a program that adopts a mutual learning approach in which both American and Moroccan students should learn from each other and share their ideas and knowledge with each other.

It aims to reinforce the spirit of international collaboration and peaceful exchanges on an individual level by creating a canal of exchange far from what’s being spread in the media, and especially from an early age to form a generation conscious of the importance of multilateral cooperation between cultures, and that goes beyond geographical borders, and stereotypes as well.

02. Project Objectives

Strengthen engagement between young people in the Middle East and North Africa and the United States,
Stimulate collaboration between participants from both sides to work on developing solutions to local problems related to the UN Sustainable Development Goals,
Enforce project-based learning and international collaboration to enhance participants’ global competency and to help them gain critical career readiness skills,
Prepare students for success by emphasizing cross-cultural communication, leadership development, and project management skills in the curriculum,
Strengthen participants’ critical thinking and collaboration skills,
Help them turn their ideas into action, especially while working cross-culturally,
Impart meaningful global citizenship and community involvement,
Motivate participants to collaborate for the benefit of their communities and themselves as individuals.

Youth Leaders Exchange Program

admin — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 07:08:23 +0000

Let’s Dialogue project

The two main organizations, AFCD and R:UD share the same vision as they both believe that youth are the backbone of society. They also have a shared responsibility towards young people as they are active in civil society organizations in their communities.

To bring about tangible change to communities, AFCD and Rebuild youth school are working together to highlight the importance of young people in the development process. And to do that, they organized the Youth First program for the youth in Alhouaz province and the Douars surrounding Ait Ourir, where the first part of the project took place, together with five new local associations.

The Youth Leader Exchange will add resources to help reach the goals of the partnership project. They will function as project officers and have a role in securing that, especially by focusing on communication, gathering information, making portfolios or exhibitions to create local ownership, and gathering more knowledge on how we work with youth empowerment towards youth that are not already active in the local society.

01. Organizations – Partners

AFCD is an independent association of highly ambitious youth volunteers who vowed to improve their areas, light people’s path, and raise their awareness about the importance of their contributions to improve their living conditions. AFCD has always adopted a sort of thorough approach in the improvement of the regions within their reach; therefore, AFCD focuses on the areas that affect people’s daily lives on the short, mid, and long term; society, economy, and environment. We mobilize young people to advance the global goals for sustainable development through targeted community projects that create awareness and ownership of community progress among all citizens. AFCD engages all sectors of society: government and civil society by supporting youth-led, community-based initiatives in Ait Ourir, as well as demonstrate the power of young people to create sustainable change.

R:UD is a youth group in Rebuild Youth School that works with international perspectives. Rebuild Youth School’s core task is – through youth involvement – to support young people’s identity formation and development towards independence in an active community through good experiences as well as formal and informal learning in inspiring communities. The purpose of R:UD is to create new communities across national borders, thus it looks forward to contributing to the process of young people empowerment to participate in community life – both locally and globally.

02. Expectations and objectives

In the Partnership Project we are going to expand the project with new Moroccan partners from the surrounding areas of Ait Ourir. It is a big task, and we believe that the Youth Leaders can support this ambitious project by both securing a better implementation of the project, as well as collecting data for the points in which we succeed and where we should do better.

Youth First Academy

admin — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 07:02:07 +0000

Youth First Academy Project

Youth first academy is a project implemented by AFCD Foundation and rebuild youth school from Denmark with the aim the give youth in Alhaouz province the needed and the vibrant skills to be active in their societies and bring about positive change to their communities.

Youth First Academy gives youth from the primary target group a possibility to make an impact on their local community. It also focuses on improving the conditions for youth who are not already active in their community or is likely to be.

It therefore contributes to empower a group of youth who is often neglected and does not have the same access to be an active part of the community. The secondary target group is forging and improving their already acquired skills which they can use in their future education and work.

And the Alumna is the stage, we believe, where Youth First participants have the possibility, and skills to raise the voice about the importance of youth empowerment to change the structures in the society.

01. Project Strategy

The youth activities find expression in the workshops, mentoring and making the youth projects. AFCD is getting new organizational capacity by being in a coordinating role with 5 new associations.

These latter are getting capacity building as well by working on youth empowerment, recruiting etc. Therefore, there are capacity building in two mutual levels for the partner associations. AFCD is getting a new role by being a coordinator and it needs to succeed with Youth First through the 5 new associations.

AFCD is thereafter a mentoring project for the 5 other associations. The five new associations are enhancing capacity building by working explicitly with youth involvement, which is quite new for some of them, and therefore Youth First is a new branch in their associations.

The alumina has – as mentioned above – a great potential for advocating for youth empowerment and the voice of the youth. At the same time, it is a place for maintaining the youth’s interest in superior involvement within their local society and networking with other youth who have the same interest and experience. Hopefully they can use this network for projects which will be beneficial for the local life generally, and for youth specifically.

There will be a focus on gender equality. Women empowerment is an issue that most organizations deal with worldwide; AFCD is no exception, thus we work tremendously to involve women in our projects and encourage them to be active within their communities and be models for everyone, their children in particular.

Women have proved to be highly effective, arduous, and dependable when it comes to the development. Their education is a great concern for AFCD, as you may have known “you educate a man, you educate a man; you educate a woman, you educate a generation”. So, it’s time to create better opportunities for women. Lately, the AFCD conducted an extensive training in gender-based violence as well as a training for women in e-commerce and social media ads.

02. Project Objectives

Youth First Academy aims to empower young people to be an active part of their community by getting skills to initiate projects, events, and activities, who have a positive impact on local society as well as the individual youth participating.

To give 150 youth participants aged 15 to 25 years old the skills to engage in civil society projects (5 Youth First projects with 30 participants in each).
To give 25-30 youth the opportunity to hone their skills as community leaders and pass their skills on to others.
To develop the outskirts of Ait Ourir by creating network between associations to provide vibrant and skilled youth leaders outside city center.

03. Project Activities

To give 25-30 youth the opportunity to hone their skills as community leaders and pass their skills on to others

Workshop for non-active youth.
Mentoring for the non-active youth.
Settling community projects.

To give 25-30 youth the opportunity to hone their skills as community leaders and pass their skills on to others

Advanced training (5 days with Danish youth participating)
Settling workshops and being mentors in 5 cites
Create and be a part of The Youth First Alumina

To develop the outskirts of Ait Ourir by creating network between associations to provide vibrant and skilled youth leaders outside city center

Inspiration trip to Denmark to see how The Danish organisation work with youth involvement and getting organizational sparring.
Network meetings between the associations
Evaluation meeting in Ait Ourir

Sustainable Development Goals Summer School Project

admin — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 04:48:06 +0000

SDGs Summer School

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) give us the way forward to achieving a better and more sustainable future for all. They are a global call to action to eradicate poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that all human beings live in peace and prosperity. The goals are interconnected, and to leave no one behind, it is important to achieve each of them and each of the targets by 2030.

Faced with the immensity of the economic, social, and environmental challenges that characterize the state of the planet in recent centuries, NGOs have a specific role to play through their contribution to global advances in knowledge and the promotion of useful research and training to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, since the SDGs are an intergenerational issue, they cannot be achieved without the mobilization and involvement of young people.

The AFCD foundation is at the service of this ambitious approach with the establishment of a summer school program, based on a questioning of the role of young people in the implementation of the SDGs. The five days of SDGs Summer School were punctuated by conferences, debates, workshops, and discovery trips to the Alhaouz region.

01. Project Objectives

Raise awareness among young people about the SDGs.
Promote the role of youth in the contribution and implementation of the SDGs and push them to take part in the dialogue on the SDGs.
Increase the involvement of NGOs in the 2030 Agenda through concrete actions.
Valuing the role of youth through proposing and writing advocacy papers for sustainable development.

Youth Leadership Bootcamp

admin — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 04:38:39 +0000

Youth Leadership Boot-camp project

Youth Leadership Boot camp (YLB) is a 3-day residential workshop at at Ait Ourir city, for youth between 18 to 25 from all over the kingdom.

Youth Leadership Bootcamp is designed to deliver a transformative personal experience for the participants, build their leadership capabilities, and help them generate innovative thinking.

Through a highly competitive application and interview-based screening process, we selected 20 passionate youth who are committed to making a positive difference in the lives of others.

Boot camp participants not only develop tangible skills to make them more competitive in their careers, but also gain valuable insights into the workplace through exposure visits.

Our goal is to prepare, shape, and empower youth to lead themselves and others, communicate confidently, think creatively, inspire others, and become effective community leaders.

Project Objectives

Our main objectives are:

Provide participants with the skills and knowledge necessary to develop their own leadership style.
Encourage participants to express themselves clearly through effective resume and cover letter, interview skills, and personal action plans.
Allow participants to face real-world challenges.
Establish communication channels among young Moroccan leaders.