Sustainable Agriculture Morocco Project #1563

Grow Trees and Offset Carbon with African Farmers

by High Atlas Foundation

Project Report | Aug 7, 2018
CARING FOR LIFE IN TADMAMT

By Saloua Rmita & Hajar Ennamli | HAF Interns

Tadmamt tree nursery, Province of Al Haouz (23 July 2018)

We are volunteering with High Atlas Foundation in Marrakesh, for the purpose of living an unforgettable experience and discovering HAF’s activities.

Our first project site visit was to Tadmamt. HAF’s tree nursery represents a partnership with the Department of Waters and Forests, and it was first funded in 2012 by the United Nations Development Program.

This nursery includes one hectare of land for planting three kinds of organic fruit seeds which are irrigated by a large water basin. There are cherry (60 000 seeds), almond (85,800 seeds), and walnuts (45,000 seeds).

Upon arriving at the site, we met Mr. Youssef, who takes care of the land now that his father, who is the responsible in the nursery, is ill. In our journey, we went visit Mr. Omar, Youssef‘s father, at his home. His family is so humble and generous. They welcomed us with a smile.

Mr. Omar, is a sixty-year-old man. In addition, he is a hard-working person who supports his large family from the salary he receives from HAF. Mr. Omar lives 12 kilometers from the nursery. This doesn’t prevent him from coming every morning to the nursery, except for now that he is not feeling well. It is more than a job for him, it is a story of love.

Moreover, HAF’a approach consists to improve livelihoods of rural households, increasing incomes and socioeconomic status of marginalized villages. HAF’s goal is to overcome the poverty cycle by pushing past traditional practices of subsistence agriculture with the help of the nurseries and other agricultural activities, such as cooperative and certifying organic.

HAF‘s purpose is noble. This amazing organization is supporting and helping people to achieve their dreams. This experience taught us how hard life is for other people, and how the Foundation is trying hard to make people’s life easier and give them chances to make their lives better.

We are thankful to the High Atlas Foundation for giving us such a wonderful opportunity to be here as volunteers.

Give to this important nursery for family farmers in Morocco.

Youssef, Omar’s son, caring for the Tadmamt nursery.

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Jul 19, 2018
Six years following the UNDP's grant to launch the Tadmamt tree nursery

By Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir | HAF President

Six years after the implementation of the walnut tree nursery at Tadmamt, located in the Rural Commune of Asni (Province of Taroudant), the nursery continues now in 2018 to provide approximately 125,000 trees annually for the region and beyond. The land of the nursery is provided in-kind by the Regional Direction of Waters and Forests in Marrakech, and its initial funding in 2012 was granted by the United Nations Development Program. In 2016, the nursery started to include almond seeds, and this year it was expanded in size by about one-third through the ongoing generosity of Waters and Forests. Ecosia, a social enterprise based in Germany, is HAF's most recent partner that has invested in this nursery for Moroccan farming families, and enabled the fulfillment of its expansion.

The news of the good consequences of this organic fruit tree nursery gets even better. First in 2017, HAF concluded a partnership agreement with the High Commission of Waters and Forests in Rabat that enables the national allowance for granting of land by Waters and Forests to the High Atlas Foundation for community tree nurseries. This Agreement now encourages Morocco's regional administrations to enter into a similar partnership with HAF that was achieved with the Tadmamt nursery in the Marrakech region. In this regard, HAF and Tetouan's Regional Direction of Waters and Forests signed a partnership agreement to implement a 3.5 hectare nursery in the Province of Ouezzane. This nursery will concentrate on growing the 14 varieties of Moroccan endemic fig varieties that are threatened. Pending agreements for land from Waters and Forests for organic tree nurseries currently exist with the regions of Beni Mellal and Taroudant.

Furthermore, since the launch of the UNDP-funded nursery in Tadmamt in 2012, HAF expanded the initiative to include the organic certification of walnuts and almonds (including 300 hectares in the Toubkal municipality), empowered local cooperatives, and processed (with certification from the Moroccan ONSAA food inspectors) and sold ten tons of product. Lastly and vitally, HAF also developed the capacities as a team to monitor and register the trees for potential sale of the carbon credits that they generate. As part of their agreement in 2017, HAF works with the High Commission of Waters and Forests and its regional administrations yo monitor and have certified the carbon credits sequestered by the nation's forests. This is a major undertaking and we are discussing with the Waters and Forests managers in Beni Mellal and in its Province of Azilal specific forests to advance this vast potential.

The UNDP's initial investment keeps on giving and has grown to include expanding the original nursery, creating new nurseries, the achievement of the agricultural value chain, the granting of Waters and Forests land for community carob plots granted for cultivation, carbon credit monitoring, and new vital partners. HAF could not be more grateful to all stakeholders, past and present, and for all those who join this cause of sustainable organic agriculture, processing, and carbon credit monitoring to end rural poverty in Morocco

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Jun 27, 2018
HAF nurseries thrive with youth protection centers

By Theodore Maghrak | Volunteer, High Atlas Foundation

The High Atlas Foundation (HAF) was founded in 2000 with one overarching goal: to empower disadvantaged Moroccan communities, endorsing grassroots development and catalyzing sustainable economic growth. Requested by most communities, planting fruit trees for rural families is one of HAF’s many major projects. HAF raises trees in nurseries around the country, and once they are ready for planting, they participate with the recipients to ensure they’re properly relocated. Once a family receives trees, they are the sole beneficiaries of the fruits (and profits) grown with these trees.

In an innovative partnership, HAF has been working with a youth protection center for at-risk youth in Fes for about a year. Boys between the ages of 12 and 18 are residents at the center for roughly six months at a time, either serving in lieu of jail time, or having come as orphans. HAF became involved roughly a year ago, bringing a tree nursery to the center’s grounds. This year, through the partnership, they have planted about 300,000 seeds, working alongside the children to empower them with new skills. While learning about community empowerment, sustainability, agriculture, and more, the partnership helps provide much-needed structure that may ultimately reduce recidivism rates after the children return to their communities at-large.

The center, run by the Ministry of Youth and Sport, is one of twenty such centers nationwide. With youth representing an estimated 2.7 percent of the prison population in Morocco, these centers provide a valuable alternative to incarceration. These centers’ goal is to provide much-needed structure for youth offenders in a rehabilitative environment, while offering educational and vocational training. Several centers have programs in which the youth can receive a certificate or diploma following their training. Setting the series of centers apart from jails, they work to maintain and strengthen links between the youth, their families, and their community.

This shift is part of a larger global trend to reduce youth incarceration, opting instead to place youth in what one researcher calls “a robust continuum of community-based programs that endeavor to provide the exact elements research is telling us youth need to thrive and desist from delinquency.” This “continuum” of community-based alternatives to incarceration should provide, according to Penal Reform International, the following: education and vocational training; programs, recreation and religion; maintenance of family ties; maintenance of community ties; and ultimately plan for a transition out of a facility.After implementing alternatives like these locally, many states and municipalities in the United States have seen dramatic reductions in youth arrest, incarceration, and recidivism rates.

The partnership between HAF and the youth protection center confers benefits to both the Moroccan community at-large and the youth in residence at the center. It empowers families to have an additional source of income and nutrition, while simultaneously taking part in a larger global practice in reducing recidivism rates and combating extremism before it can develop among at-risk youth in the center. This is of critical importance in Morocco, where 28 percent of the population between 15 and 24 are unemployed, and not in school or any sort of professional training. This un- and underemployment puts Moroccan youth at risk in many ways, principally in that it can build a culture of resentment.

HAF is currently developing another partnership and an argan and carob tree nursery with a youth protection center in Oujda, with is including the youth from the first stages. With the knowledge that they’re working towards a larger goal, helping a great number of rural Moroccan families, the youth involved benefit from a sense of empowerment and the satisfaction of helping others, fostered in this innovative partnership.

Traditional in-kind land donations have tremendous impacts on the community at-large, and these contributions with the youth protection centers have ripple effects on a larger level. This partnership could blossom at a national level, if partnered with all 20 youth protection centers run by the Ministry of Youth and Sport. At the center in Fes alone, the 300,000 planted seeds will grow into trees tended by staff, youth in residence, and volunteers. Once these trees are distributed among rural families, on average comprising nine family members each, the impact on the community comes into clear focus. This is only a small portion of HAF’s overall efforts, but the possibilities of a larger partnership with all the centers would multiply those efforts in ways that bring benefits to not only the families receiving trees, but also empowering at-risk youth with structure, education, and positive role models and leadership.

Empower youth.

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