GENERAL
Team Yallah Dubai will participate in Cap Femina Aventure to help refurbish a school
By Janice Ponce de Leon, Staff Reporter
Image Credit: Cap Femina Aventure
Dubai: Rainwater leaks through the roof. The walls have holes. Out of four classrooms, two need repairs, forcing 100 students to alternately use the remaining two rooms.
This is where primary students ages three to 12 study in the Tafilalet region of northern Morocco.
And this is where two Dubai residents, Mathilde Rottembourg and Carinne Abou-Huguet, are heading as Team Yallah Dubai this October for the Cap Femina Aventure charity rally.
The rally will see all-women teams pound Moroccan dunes on four-wheelers en route to an educational centre that needs refurbishing and repainting.
Gulf News spoke to non-profit international organisation, Coeur de Gazelles, the main organiser of the Cap Femina Aventure, on the secret school destination of the rally by women for women this 2014.
Jerome Zindy, a representative of the group, said the beneficiary school was chosen based on the urgent needs of the school.
“Two of the four classrooms cannot be used because the roof has leaks and they don’t have proper walls. Some 100 children have to share the two remaining rooms. Classes are done in rotation,” Zindy told Gulf News in a phone interview from France.
The poor condition of schools, Zindy said, is common in most public schools in the rural areas of Morocco.
According to a paper titled The Morocco Country Case Study by the Global Health Workforce Alliance, poverty and social inequalities have always been a constant challenge in Morocco, with national poverty rates pegged at 9.0 per cent. Illiteracy rate is estimated to be 43 per cent, according to the Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation.
In 2012, Cap Femina Aventure repainted and refurbished the school of Merzouga that benefitted 300 primary children. After a year, they went to a Hassilabiad school that caters to 200 children.
“The schools don’t look like the schools we’re familiar with in France. Theirs are very basic buildings and the school environment is not good for children,” Zindy said.
For the chosen school this year, organisers will get all the technical repairs done before the rally drivers arrive in the school for the repainting and refurbishing.
The group will also plant trees and grass to provide a respite to students in the sweltering heat of Morocco during the summer months.
“The school playground does not have shaded green areas. There are no trees; and to think temperatures could reach as high as 50 Celsius during summer,” Zindy said. “They don’t have air-conditioning nor electric fans, just windows.”
The group will also install computers and sports equipment that the children can use in the long run. They will work together with local associations to ensure that the distribution of donated goods is done in a fair and sustainable way.
But Zindy said they only pick to help a school if the community is willing to help. They have to own the project, he said.
“When we work on a project, we want the local population to be involved. We’d like them to work with us and to show that they want to make that change in the community,” Zindy said.
“We have seen positive returns from the communities we’ve touched over the past two years. The team spirit has improved. Children are proud of their new school and they feel that they are part of it.”
