North Africa Community and Conservation

Dar Taliba Educational Project

The Global Diversity Foundation has joined forces with Maghrebio and the Natural History Museum of Marrakech (NHMM) to sponsor an educational project at Dar Taliba, a girls boarding school in Ourika, a town about 40 kilometers from Marrakech in the foothills of the High Atlas mountains. Our goals are to increase educational opportunities for young girls – enhancing their future role in community development – and to allow them to gain a deeper appreciation of their own culture while they pursue formal schooling.

Ibn Abi Sofra Urban School Garden Project

GDF is working with Maghrebio and the Natural History Museum of Marrakech to restore a two acre fruit orchard and vegetable garden in collaboration with students and teachers from the Ibn Abi Sofra primary school. The school is located in the former Agdal Bahmed, an abandoned 19 hectare garden behind the Palais Bahia in the Marrakech Medina. The initiative builds on an old institution: Ibn Abi Sofra was one of Morocco’s original ‘agricultural primary schools’, created to ensure that urban education conveyed traditional farming knowledge and new agricultural practices to young children, many of them from families who had come to the city during a vast rural exodus in the last half of the 20th century. Read more >

High Atlas fruit tree planting 

In association with the High Atlas Foundation, GDF is participating in the free distribution of fruit trees to local communities of the High Atlas mountains.  The initiative is supported by local authorities, village associations and local NGOs.  In March 2006, 2400 cherry trees and 800 apple trees were given to residents of six communities of the Imnane valley.  Over 300 households received between 8 and 20 trees each to plant in their agricultural terraces.  The fruit production will enhance local livelihoods, and the mature trees will stabilize the terraces and prevent soil erosion.  Youziou Mohamed, a farmer and horticulturalist from Asni, taught villagers how to prune the fruit trees once they grow.  Hadj Hassan El Ouizi, owner of a plant nursery in Ghmat, donated 50 quince trees to a primary school that GDF is helping to build for the communities of Isdars and Tlat n'Chaout.