Moroccan Diaspora-Funded School in Azilal Faces Opening Hurdles

The NGO "Choisir d’Agir" will have succeeded in doing the essential: raising the necessary funds for the construction of this public utility building. Yet, it will have to wait longer to see the beneficiaries benefit from it.

According to the officials of this association, moreover, shocked by the situation, the Regional Directorate of Education has not issued the school an authorization to teach, before the start of the school year which begins in less than a month. In a press release, the Association nevertheless notes that, in this remote region where temperatures can reach up to -15 degrees, at least 25 children are ready to enroll in this school, for the 2019-2020 school year, which will save them from having to walk up to 2 hours through the mountains.

The NGO, which says it has decided to build this school in response to the distress of these children, is saddened by the refusal of the Regional Directorate to grant it the authorization to open. Confiding to the colleagues of HuffPost, Youssef Mellouki, President of this Association, specified that "it is one of the most remote regions of the Kingdom, where children have to travel up to 14 km (round trip), on foot, to get to the nearest school". He added: "Despite all our efforts, the Regional Directorate of Education in Azilal continues its blockage, without giving us any reason, which seems to us both surprising and surreal".

However, the Association points out, a first phase of its project, including pre-school classes, a first in the region, did see the light of day in October 2018, welcoming more than twenty children, which makes the current blockage even more surprising, especially for a school to international standards which has also already been inaugurated in April 2019.