When we started working with the women of Douar Anzal – a Berber village in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains – in 2012, we conducted a study on education levels, job opportunities and living conditions. The results were alarming: out of 160 women, only 35 (22 percent) went to school, and out of 139 children, 80 (57 percent) went to school at that time. As the unemployment rate of women was equal to the illiteracy rate (80 percent), we set ourselves the goal of fighting illiteracy – because education is the basis for a job and thus independence. We founded the literacy programme for women, which also teaches basic IT knowledge and continues to this day.
The school programme for women not only enables them to create a basis for their own financial independence, but also to support their children with household chores. After their children have attended pre-school and school in the morning, the women go to school for three hours in the afternoon every day – 5 days a week. The children and women are taught by our teacher Lahcen, a young man from the community. Every week we get an overview of what they have learned and who attended.
In the meantime, more and more women sign up for our literacy programme, so that our school in Douar Anzal is always well filled.
In the school, the women not only learn how to read and write, but they also receive basic IT knowledge, as computer training is one of the subjects taught. Learning how to use new technologies greatly improves the prospect of getting a good job.
The computer training for women could be introduced thanks to the great support of labdoo.org. If you want to donate your used laptop to a good cause, you can do so at labdoo. It will be refurbished and given to charitable organisations such as the ABURY Foundation. Labdoo also installs the necessary languages and an Ubuntu operating system on the laptop.
