The Association des femmes rurales pour le développement was created by Empowering Women in the Atlas and acts as the legal branch for projects in the Middle Atlas region.
Empowering Women in the Atlas is a humanitarian and social initiative that was founded by Lamia Bazir in 2011 while she was an undergraduate student. It aims to promote the leadership of rural women as a catalyst for community development.
Empowering Women in the Atlas has three main ongoing projects:
1- The Hammam community center: A women lead project ($50 000) established through a participatory process for the women of the village of Adghagh; It is in the process of setting a multiservice center that includes a health care center, a public bathhouse-Hammam, and a women’s artifacts center managed by the Association des femmes rurales pour le développement and used by the whole community.
2- Education Discovery Program for rural youth is an exchange program established with the Municipality of Tingvoll in Norway (EU Erasmus funds) enabling young girls and boys aged between 13-17 to leave the boundaries of their villages in the Middle Atlas mountains and travel abroad for the first time in order to discover another culture, build new friendships, discover the Norvegian education system, and get a training in solar energy that is implemented in the Hammam women led project in Adghagh.
This program also includes the equipment of a local school and the organization of extracurricular activities and workshops for more than 200 children in the village.
3- The Entrepreneurship program launched in september 2016 ($100,000 MEPI US department of state funds) to 100 women from 5 localities in the Middle Atlas region to get: a) training in financial autonomy environmental awareness, and entrepreneurship b) support for developping their cooperatives and generating income through sustainable projects.
Contact us:
ewa.morocco@gmail.com
Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/EmpoweringWomenInTheAtlas/
website:
www.ewatlas.org
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/EWAMorocco”