Its a beautiful day today, why dont we go study outside?

The Project #2

In the last two weeks the students have began to plan their project for this year - a social cultural center for the young people of Larache. Can you imagine that a city this size doesn´t have a place where young people can practice sports, meet together, do art or theatre, or study. Because of this necesity the students decided to create this year a project for a Social Cultural Center for the youth of Larache.

Now we just need somebody to fund it. Any takers?

As the students are doing a great job planning the project myself and the other teachers decided to take them to a beautiful place here in the country to study.

For all those that it might interest, the place we went to is called Sidi Barack (saint barack) And no I am not talking about Saint Barack Obama, this place is named for a religious man of a few centuries ago. Now dead, his tomb is a place of pilgramage for woman who want to get married and get pregnant. There is cave here where they go to wash themselves, hang their undergarments on the roof, and ask the spirits for the man of their dreams. Very interesting but we didnt go here to get married exactly, we came to learn.

Two of the girls in front of a traditional house on the way to the village

Our classroom for the day. Looks pretty cool doesnt it?

And Mr Tree isnt bothered by the thumb tacks. Anyway I think he likes the idea of helping us learn. Here Layla is explaining a "problem tree" that her group has created in response to the problems of the youth of Larache.

After the lesson....as always...we do a creative evaluation of the activity.

So much praying...looks like it worked. On the way back we ran into a parade of woman who have spent all the day asking the saint for a man to get married to. We decided to give them Simo. I dont think he minded at all.

And as the woman let out the traditional wedding chants Karim and Abdsamad wrapped up the deal.

How beautiful!

Chapter 4 The Project

CHAPTER 4: How to create and plan a social-cultural project

The Goals of this chapter are: To teach the members of the course how to design and plan the different activities that they would like to develop with their association or as an individual. With that goal in mind they will adquire the fundamental concepts of a social cultural project.

The first part is to learn the difference between a plan, a project, and a program.

Here to the instructor, Seloua, uses a brillant technique. We get rid of the chairs and sit all together on the floor. One single level, there is no professor nor student, we are all here learning together. I loved the idea! Now that we had gotten the first part down the students could begin to go through the different steps of planing that go into a social cultural project.

The different phases are:

Analysis of the Reality

Title of Project

Type of Project

Justification

Goals

Methodology

Activities

Expected Results

Time Management and Schedule

Budget

Evaluation

For hands on learning and in order help teach the lessons we invent an imaginary project. Each group will be designated a specific part of the project. Through the putting together of the project the students will discover parts of the learning process that doesnt come from lectures.

Its a long process, the project is complicated and requires a lot of work...but even so we are moving along very nicely. Thanks to the all of the students this year who amaze me everyday with their relentless dedication and hardworking spirit.