Juillet 12 2011, Casablanca, Injaz Al Maghreb

Mardi le 12 juillet, nous avons rencontré Alexandre Giraud de Injaz Al Maghreb, une société crée en 2006 pour promouvoir l’entrepreneuriat. Injaz est membre de l’organisation < Junior Achievement> , leader mondial en matière de soutien à l’éducation. Injaz Al Maghreb ont cinq programmes qu’ils livrent dans les régions de Casablanca et Rabat. Le premier programme ressemble beaucoup au modèle Québécois des ‘Jeunes Entreprises du Québec ‘ : des élèves sont séparés en groupes et se partages des titres comme président, VP Marketing, VP Finance, etc. Ces élèves créent une entreprise et reçoivent de l’encadrement des cadres d’entreprises. Injaz a quatre autres initiatives : City Bank game, success skills, cours d’entrepreneuriat, business leaders. Leur objectif est de toucher 100,000 élèves en l’année 2015.

July 11 2011, Casablanca, Al Mostaqbal

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.  EHE dHEfd 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.

La générosité Marocaine !

Nous avons été agréablement surpris par la générosité des personnes responsables des projets en partenariat avec l'association PMM ainsi que leurs familles et amis qui nous accueillent généreusement à bras ouvert durant nos déplacement à leurs régions. 

Ces déplacements seront nécessaires pour comprendre la réalité du terrain marocain afin de mieux conseiller PMM quant au développement de ses activités futures et être en mesure de contribuer efficacement à l’amélioration de l’accès à l’éducation en milieu rural. Pour ce faire, nous aurons l'occasion de rencontrer les habitants des villages, parents et enfants, les directeurs et professeurs des écoles locales ainsi que les responsables des associations partenaires de PMM dans lesdites régions.

Nos remerciements à toutes les personnes responsables des organismes suivants ainsi qu'à leurs collaborateurs:

• Association Femmes Méditerranéennes pour le Développement: Villages ASLAAH, Ain LAHCEN et Bni WSSIM - Province TÉTOUAN
• Réseau des associations Iguidar: Village TAGHJIJT - Province GUELMIME
• Association Al Wahda Taksbite: Village TAKSBITE - Province CHTOUKA AIT BAHA
• Association Aït Souka: Village Aït SOUKA - Province MARRAKECH
• Groupe scolaire Guerouane: Village GUEROUANE - Province MIDELT

Nous tenons aussi à remercier les membres de l’association PMM, qui résident au Maroc ou qui y seront durant la période de notre projet, ainsi que nos familles et amis qui nous accueilleront à bras ouverts durant notre séjour et nous aideront avec le matériel nécessaire pour que notre projet soit une réussite... INCH'ALLAH !

Ali, pour l'Équipe Action Éducation
actioneducation.maroc@gmail.com

CASABLANCA J-21

Chers amis, l'équipe Action Éducation en est aux derniers préparatifs de sa mission... Nous avons tous très hâte d'être au Maroc et de représenter fièrement le MBA HEC Montréal au service de PMM ! Suivez-nous sur ce Blog et notre page Facebook, votre support est important pour nous !

Stay tuned on our blog !

Branding and Other Updates

Today we had our first conference call this month as part of the team (Mel, Ralph, Bachir) are doing an exchange in Lyon, while the others (Ali, Dana) are in Montreal. It was definitely fun to catch up and hear the news about life in the France. Here are some project updates

1. We have the MBA director as our professor! Professor Wybo has been extremely enthusiastic and helpful throughout this project and we are very excited to have him on board!
2. Finally, after months of brainstorming, we have finally come up with a project name we all like.
In French it is "Action Education"
In English, it is "Education Matters"
3. We are going to start finalizing the contacts with the local partners this week
4. The Lyon team are also going to dress a list of organizations of interest that we can contact
5. We are still looking for corporate sponsors

Please feel free to message us, we would love to hear from you!

La star Marocaine Basma Boussil chante l'enfant

Exams are here!

We`ve been a little bit busy these days with end of period exams and papers and this is why we haven’t blogged in a week. We are still finding some times to meet and coordinate for this project. We are preparing to approach companies that might be interested in financially supporting us in return for publicity on our blog and on our reports.

The good news is that we already have one diamond sponsor, our university, HEC Montreal. The MBA department has been excited and enthusiastic about this project and has extended its support to include an important financial contribution. We also have a silver sponsor, Agent Illustrateur, a company of an artistically gifted colleague of ours at the MBA program. Take a look at their pages! We feel really blessed by this support.

Would you know of any companies or individuals who would also be interested in gaining more visiblity while helping us? Can you help us spread the word? You can send us a private message at eduka@gmail.com