Sponsor Empowerment for a Teen Girl in Morocco

Dear Project Soar Friend,

We hope you continue to be well, as we send our gratitude to you, our supporter.

Your generous help and sponsorship is helping us to provide our teen leadership workshops all over Morocco. The 2022/2023 program has just started, and our amazing empowerment facilitators has yet to deliver the first workshop, but we can see from the high number of new girls registering that we are off to a great start. 

As we look back at last year’s success, we can’t but think about Oumaima, a 17-year-old from the south of Morocco, precisely from a town called Guelmim, who has not been a Soar Girl for long but has greatly benefitted from the program since she joined early last year. Oumaima used to be a very shy, reason why her philosophy teacher at school encouraged her to look into us to overcome it, as she saw great potential in her and did not want her to miss any opportunity that could come her way. She could not have been more right. Oumaima has blessed us with so much energy and spirit of resourcefulness since she joined: as soon as the possibility of being part of the BIGGER Movement to advocate against child marriage in Morocco came up, she seized the moment. She has recently returned from a trip to the capital Rabat where, together with a delegation of other 9 teen girls like her, she visited the Parliament and met with both the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Social Development, Family and Solidarity, as well as other feminist decision-makers who listened to the delegation’s request to abolish such a harmful procedure still happening in the country as per today. 

We can’t but continue to be proud of Oumaima as she recently passed her BAC2 exam with one of the highest grades among her peers, 17 out of 20, and is now up to her first month of university, where she studies agronomy and veterinary medicine. 

“Month after month I have learned how to make my voice heard and fight for my rights”.  

Oumaima states the module she mostly benefitted from are “Voice” and “Rights”, after which she started being more aware of her potential and personal strengths. 

Testimonies like Oumaima’s shows that the 5-modules Soar in a Box program actually helps so many girls all across Morocco to exploit their potential to the full once they realise their value; it’s also because of you, donor, that we can keep giving this opportunity to so many teen girls coming from underserved areas.

Thank you for your commitment to Project Soar and supporting teen girls such as Oumaima to discover their true potential in a supportive community. We are so grateful to you. 

Stay tuned for many more exciting stories and updates about our program. 

With Love, 

Project Soar’s team. 

Dear Friends,

We know that you believe in the mission of Project Soar: to empower teen girls to be the leaders of today and tomorrow, but how do we do that? Some say it takes a village – we say, it takes a squad. 

Your gifts in this campaign allow us to pay local women facilitators to create “girl squads” or safe spaces to run 25 weekly empowerment workshops in their communities for new teen girls every school year. Girls Not Brides reports that having a “safe regular meeting place allows girls to meet with peers and share experiences which can reduce their sense of isolation and vulnerability.” Thanks to your support, this is happening across Morocco every week – here is one Soar Story:

15-year-old Soar Girl Yasmine was having trouble integrating in school with her peers and teachers. Before she joined Project Soar in November 2021 in Ouarzazate, a city in southern Morocco known as the gateway to the Sahara desert, her facilitators Oumaima and Kaltouma reported that Yasmine was getting low grades and was close to dropping out of school. After attending 7 Soar empowerment workshops, Yasmine started to believe that she should stay in school, but her facilitators knew that she would need followup and ongoing support. 

In January, during Module 4 (Rights): Workshop 2: I have the right to pursue an education, facilitators Oumaima and Kaltouma added an additional activity to the workshop that day. They asked the Soar Girls in their squad to write positive and encouraging letters to Yasmine.

Since January, Oumaima and Kaltouma continue to observe how Yasmine values her education so much more, and how she is persevering through the challenging time of adolescence. She is insistent on staying in school and pursuing her education. We are happy to report that Yasmine is still in school today thanks to her role model facilitators, the girls in her squad, and the safe space that this program creates for girls who need this critical support!

Thanks to your support of the Sponsor Empowerment for a Teen Girl project and others like it, Project Soar is fostering safe spaces and girl squads across Morocco every year. 

Stay tuned for more news from Project Soar and never doubt you are making a difference!

Best Wishes,
The Project Soar Team