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Since we reported last, the 153 Dar Taliba students left the boarding house to continue their studies remotely at home, due to the closure of schools in Morocco as part of national COVID-19 measures. Despite the start of the new school year two weeks ago, schools remain closed until further notice in certain regions, including in the Ourika Valley, where Dar Taliba is located. We were so excited to welcome new students and introduce them to the Dar Taliba school garden project but we’ll have to be patient a little bit longer.

Although we miss the girls at Dar Taliba terribly - and the life they bring to the garden - we continued to take care of the seedlings the students planted, as well as the vegetables and the medicinal and aromatic plants they cultivated during the last school year. “The girls have done such an amazing job in the garden, keeping up with the garden work these past few months has not been the same without their help and enthusiasm,” Dar Taliba gardener El Housseine said.

We recently spoke with Meryam, an ex Dar Taliba student who participated in our weekly garden training sessions two years ago. “I spent two years at Dar Taliba and I loved spending time in the school garden,” she said. “In the first year I learned a lot about how to take care of the earth and soil health. Later on, we started practicing techniques such as making compost and organic fertiliser.” Through our garden training programme, we are actively engaging Dar Taliba students with local biodiversity conservation efforts and rediscovering local cultural heritage related to plants. “I really miss Dar Taliba and the outdoor activities in the garden,” Meryam says. “I hope new students will learn as much as I did and have fun together with harvesting vegetables and planting seeds.”

We also met with Dar Taliba director Fatema, who is anxious to welcome the students back to the boarding house. “The school garden brings so much joy to the students in residence,” she says. “It breaks their daily routine of going to class and teaches them about important traditional plants as well as the values of teamwork.”

While we wait for the students to return to school, we are meeting with the Dar Taliba team to come up with an exciting plan and programme in order to continue our important work with the Dar Taliba girls and to discuss the impact COVID-19 has on their education. In the meantime, you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram or visit our website for more updates about the Dar Taliba school garden and students.

GlobalGiving is currently offering matching funds!

GlobalGiving’s 5-day Little by Little Campaign is currently on, which means donations up to $50 will be matched by 50%. If you’d like to make an additional gift to this project, please do consider doing so before 18 September 11.59pm ET (Friday).

With a $15 donation, we are able to buy 30 aromatic plants for the garden.

With a $50 donation, we are able to purchase 5 fruit trees for the orchard.

Thank you.

A lot has changed since our last report in January. The world turned upside down due to a global pandemic, and so has our school garden project for 153 students at the Dar Taliba boarding house for girls. 

Due to COVID-19 lockdown restrictions in Morocco, all schools are closed until September 2020. Unfortunately, this means that the Dar Taliba students are currently unable to attend their classes and their weekly garden training sessions. However, we are pleased that we were able to carry out our outdoor garden activities as usual for the most part of the school year.

During the months of February and March, the girls participated in 13 garden training sessions and planted hundreds of seeds in their greenhouse, including aromatic and medicinal plants such as sage (Salvia officinalis) and lavender (Lavandula officinalis). They also made an additional pile of fresh compost, prepared a natural pesticide and planted dozens of  baby vegetables in the garden, including carrots, radishes, eggplants and turnips.

More recently, our Dar Taliba project was featured in Evidence of Hope: Women of Morocco, part of a series of portraits of people and projects from around the world who are successfully addressing global challenges. The Dar Taliba students proudly shared their skills and knowledge with the Evidence of Hope team and we can’t wait to organise a screening of the short film once they return to school. They also welcomed other visitors to their school garden over the past few months, including a host from Radio Amazigh, a local radio programme that highlights stories from Amazigh rural communities linked to the environment and women’s empowerment. Four students were brave enough to participate in interviews and they did an excellent job! 

Thanks to the generous support of our GlobalGiving donors, this project is flourishing and the Dar Taliba school garden continues to grow into a wonderful outdoor space for students to learn and grow together. We are so very grateful.

Luckily we ended this year’s school garden training programme with an exciting final activity before the lockdown started. Perhaps you remember the drawing activity we organised last year with a group of Dar Taliba students? Based on this activity and others, we developed a colourful booklet that features local and useful plant products selected by the students we worked with in different regions in the High Atlas, including Dar Taliba. The “Amazigh Household Basket” features beautiful drawings produced by the students, including olive trees, corn, cherries, carrots and thyme. We distributed this labour of love among the Dar Taliba students in March and they were so proud to see some of their drawings featured inside.The booklet is available online for anyone who is curious to have a look!

Although the students won’t be back at Dar Taliba until September, we are working hard to create an exciting programme for next school year with new educational materials that focus on the importance of health for humans as well as nature. Until then, you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram or visit our website for more updates about our future plans for the Dar Taliba school garden and students.