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SALTO EuroMed

I started being a volunteer with many organisations in my country since 2017. Each experience had a very enlightening impact on me. As a member of the AMUDDU association, I was doing English classes for those who wanted to improve their language. My way of teaching English is not grammar or spelling words. In contrast, trying to talk about topics that attract learners, make the language easy for them, and stimulate their mindset. I always love doing some personal development topics and about the environment as well. 

Then I got a chance to be part of the two months short-term volunteering project Step by Step in the city of Siirt, Turkey with Cedid Derneği Association.

I was nervous but overjoyed for living new experience. That was my first time to go abroad; having many thoughts in my head and many bad and good expectations. 

When I arrived, my coordinator and mentor were nice, I loved their warm hospitality, and I met the other volunteers who were from different backgrounds and nationalities: Morocco, Russia, Italy, Moldova, Spain.

 The project was about disaster education. I learned the instructions and the ways of rescuing people in any natural disease. After I had to transmit the basics of what I learned to the local community of Siirt.  Also I was teaching English by doing creative activities for the students.

I tend to follow the same way with my colleagues volunteers to talk about many topics like: environment, tolerance, immigration… I shared my culture by cooking Moroccan dishes and talked about my country during a cultural night event.

After just a few days of training. On the 6^th February 2023 the earthquake happened in the south of Turkey and north of Syria. It was a scary moment for me but fortunately I was not alone.  We tried to apply what we learned of disaster management. At that moment, I was worrying about what is going to happen to the others that have been affected directly with this quake.

The same day as a volunteer, I started looking for any way I can help in this tragedy. So, I went with my colleagues volunteers to the youth center, we started helping in packing clothes and food, I volunteered with the Red Crescent of Siirt delivering food around the city, and I also helped pack clothes for the victims of the earthquake. After we tried to come back to our normal routine, we did English language activities. In the meantime, we met some of the attendees of disaster education training. They were thankful and they kept asking us for more information.

This experience made me know how to be patient, strong and helping each other make us a better community.

When I came back to Morocco in February, I took a while to adapt back home. I still had some effects of the earthquake, I was having low energy, I did not like it when I feel something is shaking. After I joined the Amuddu Association I started applying some of things that I have learned in my experience by adding more games in my teaching way. I started being more active than before. I will be honest from time to time I had scenarios in my mind.

What if we had an earthquake in my city? What is going to happen?

It was an unbelievable thing for me.  On September 27^th, an earthquake occurred in our region, the epicentre was close to my city in Morocco. It was at night, so I stayed with the whole neighbourhood outside our homes.  I was terrified asking myself: is it real?

And the next day all I wanted to do was to help so I joined to Amuddu Association in stocking food and clothes in big depots around the city. I also volunteered with the NGO World Central Kitchen in delivering food around the destroyed villages in the High Atlas Mountains.  After I was a part of the outreached coordination team and I was a translator as well.

Currently, I am happy for having my long-term volunteering project with the ARCHE association in Grenoble in France for ten months. My mission is to work with people with disabilities as an assistant. It is very interesting for me to get to know how to be with people with special needs, I want to know more about them.  Having the curiosity to know their difficulties, also how to treat them. We are a group of international volunteers from Lebanon, Kosovo, Burkina Faso and Germany.  We are sharing many beautiful moments together.

I appreciate that I am able to have these opportunities. Being Moroccan in other countries and being open to new ways of living, taught me to accept any challenge that came in my way and live each moment as it should be. I learned giving is a very blessed action to get more than I expected.