Last Monday, we met Nacer Guertoumy, a Casablanca native that has lived in Quebec for ten years, who has founded a local NGO called Al Mostaqbal. This association has an interesting program called “Programme soutient aux élèves et d’aide aux devoirs” that provides students in the popular Sidi Belyout (Medina Bab Marrakesh) tutorial sessions after class. His program touches 2160 students out of 5000 in the region. He tries to focus on quality education by limiting the number of students per class to 15. He also tries to stimulate the economy by hiring university graduates that are looking for employment. Al Mostaqbal includes 150 ‘encadrants’ (teachers) that provide tutorial sessions to students. He has been able to get funds from I’INDH, city of Casablanca, ministry of education. He is always looking for funds because the more funds he gets, the more teachers he can afford to hire, and thus the more students benefit from the program. He tries to involve the community by regularly holding public assemblies and involving parents, students, and school principles. He also believes that there are some needs in the educational system to involve more psychologists and sociologists. It was also clear from the discussion that there were differences in the needs of the rural area schools and those in the urban areas. In the urban areas, the difficulties included: difficult social context and poverty as well as exhausted educational resources. Mr. Guertoumy believes that the best input in the education system is investment in human capital and this is why his organization invests in lessons with motivated teachers. He also ensures that his program is complimentary to the services offered by the public education system that cater to the teacher and the infrastructure.
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