Rabat – The highest achieving students from Morocco’s 2018-2019 program to Combat Illiteracy in Mosques received, on Friday, January 17, the King Mohammed VI’s Award for excellence.
The hard-working students from the program’s class of 2018, accepted the award from King Mohammed himself during Friday prayers at the Lalla Amina Mosque in Essaouira.
Recipients of the award in the women’s category included Naima Amine from Beni Mellal, Nabila El Khabchi from M’Diq-Fnideq, and Khadija Id Abdellah from Agadir.
Prize winners in the men’s category were Mbarek Id El Mehdi from Boujdour, Abdelmalek Al Merdi from Errachidia, and Abdelkarim Kaaouas fromTaza.
In his speech on the 47th anniversary of the King and People’s Revolution (20 August 2000), the King ordered that “mosques should remain open to provide literacy courses and religious, civic and health education according to a well-developed program”.
The Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs launched the program in 2000, benefiting 3,300,000 people, with 314,854 registered for the 2018-2019 school year alone.
The program, launched in response to the King’s call for literacy courses, enabled Mosques to regain their place at the forefront of guidance, spiritual orientation, and literacy. It also promoted the role of Mosques in building a democratic, modern, open society based on the rejection of exclusion and marginalization, the fight against poverty, and ignorance.
The ministry has mobilized some 7,077 mosques for the 2019-2020school year and has assigned 8,032 supervisors, 1,164 coordinators and educational advisers, as well as 400 educational trainers to ensure the satisfactory implementation of the program.
The ministry also oversees the implementation of the program to fight illiteracy through television and the Internet.
The program continues to adapt and develop, responding to the recommendations of the Higher Council for education, training and scientific research on literacy, in accordance with the strategic vision for the reform of the education and training system 2015-2030.
The ministry will also work to improve the program’s coverage rate in rural areas, increase the number of beneficiaries among men, and promote and diversify means and methods of education and teaching by investing more in new information and communication technologies, in addition to setting up a graduation system giving beneficiaries access to educational bridges between the program and different national training systems.
