Community Engagement Activities
Resilient Communities offers multiple community activities with local associations and organizations for exchange student groups in Morocco such as AMIDEAST, Center for Language and Culture in Marrakech, and others.
Activities have taken place with local associations at the Youth Center and the well-known Fiers et Forts Centre. Within the community, we offer students to visit a local family and eat a home cooked meal with them. Then we take to the streets by placing, planting, and painting pots with our engaging the “Zwin-Up” activity!
Resilient Communities has consistently implemented the “Zwin-Up” activity beginning in the neighborhood of Almajdoub and expanding outward. We purchase 40 pots from The Alibdaa Cooperative of Pottery and Ceramics in Tameslouht and 40 plants from a local nursery. Then, we place two pots to each door and then paint the pots with the neighborhood kids. We have worked with exchange groups to help fund the activity and bring their students to volunteer. The activity has gained recognition throughout Tameslouht, hopefully inspiring other associations to implement in other neighborhoods.
We recently teamed up with the Center for Language and Culture in Marrakech (CLC) to provide social engagement activities for their exchange NSLI-Y students. We organized activities at the Tameslouht Youth Center and Sports Center with our partner association, Youth for Development Without Borders. We gathering ambitious local students to work with the exchange students to develop their own activity to facilitate during the “Zwin-Up” activity. On another day, we had fun playing soccer with the same students, opening opportunities for cross-cultural dialogue between high school students.
Resilient Communities has partnered with Fiers et Forts Youth House in Tameslouht to offer collaborative activities for exchange students to engage with the kids living there. The center is well-known in Tameslouht, housing over 40 kids at any given time. They are heavily focused on environmental education, creative and performing arts, and sports. The children are always excited to participate and meet Moroccans from other cities or foreigners from other countries. We had great activities with exchange students from Cape Henry High School with the Morocco Exchange program and NSLI-Y students from the CLC.