La Cite Des Cheminots is a popular neighborhood in the northern side of Grand Casablanca. It is close to a chantey town (that we work with their youngsters as well). Our community majority are youth, who are either students or unemployed. The Quartier is 2000 apartments reserved to about 10.000 ONCF workers families. In other words, the neighborhood is reserved to employees of the National Rail Way in Morocco. Most of the neighbors work for the government with low income revenues.

Since 1991, our neighborhood has not benefited from a cultural center or a sport field. This resulted in having boys becoming trouble makers and girls who wanted to practice sports were marginalized and their priorities were put second.

Based on the Moroccan public law, “Association Action Jeunesse”, which is located in Casablanca, is a Non-Governmental Organization .Due to the lack of social services and weak infrastructure in education, the young generation in the “ Cité des Cheminots Moulay Ismail in Casablanca, decided to create an association mainly to fill the gap within our society. The association Action Jeunesse was created on 8 th of October 2000 and nowadays we have more than 200 young members and volunteers. These young volunteers govern all our activities and services. Our simple and unique strategy is to provide high quality of services (Education/culture/sports) to our young members, as well to their families.

Our goal is to touch as many youth as possible in our community. The beneficiaries of this social initiative are youth of both genders: Male and female regardless of their religion, nationality, race, ethnicity and physical abilities. We are now including kids in the sports categories.

After the creation of our association in 2000, we succeeded in building a sport court for multi purposes: Soccer, Hockey and Handball, and two basketball court fields in September 2003. The sport space was a priority on our agenda and in 3 years we managed to make it happen allowing both boys and girls to practice at ease their favorite sports. We were successful in filling the free time gaps after school time or during week-ends. Parents appreciated our involvement and presented us with advice and we become to them more trustworthy in the community.

Youth in Morocco today are getting more disparate about their social situations; we live day to day problems with them and try to guide them through educational programs set to help them empower themselves. Youth are loosing self-confidence and are getting frustrated with the situation in Morocco in general and they are revolting by blaming the government and the elected authorities about their current situation. The problem of Moroccan youth, especially in Casablanca is their denial to look for alternatives to help themselves, this situation is applicable to all levels: social, educational, economical, religious and political. Working in the Association Action Jeunesse is the opportunity for us as youth to be prepared for the future, we has as board members or just active member the opportunity to have the confidence in ourselves, and through the association many of us are finding jobs after the skills that they had learned and approved during their participation with us as volunteers.

During these eight years of efforts, and after understanding the community within our district and the neighborhood, the association has organized several activities and events, and in general there are main core categories in the services' programs that we provide to our staff such as: Education - The ALPHA literacy program – Citizenship - Sports clubs (Hockey-Football & Basketball) - Foreign Exchanges with many youth organizations world wide.

The most challenging aspect is facing our Organization here in Morocco as a youth NGO, is the politics influence in our programs and our projects.

Comparing to our colleagues in European countries or in the US, the majority of our youth are not enough involved in political activities. It is an area that remains unknown by most of the youth, they prefer to stay away of politics. Then we believe that good governance and local democracy in the daily work should be a strategic challenge to win. We educated ourselves and the other members of our NGO to include and respect these values in our activities and programs.

Finally, the Development of the Human Capital, especially youth, and achieving the MDGs is the general challenge for us as a civil society activists, and you can be part of us every where you are in the world!

 

Younes Naoumi.S
The President