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Until today, being born a girl has not been easy. It remains a reason for discrimination in many ways and in a variety of fields: Education, employment, politics, and economics. In addition, even though girls and boys have the same average innate intelligence levels, proper education is not provided equally to both genders in many countries.
Moreover, gender equality and education are the pillars of development and prosperity, increasing the overall productivity of a country’s labor force and creating a more knowledgeable based economy and society, according to the World Bank.
While Morocco is making considerable progress in girls’ and women’s rights, actual realization rates in gender equality at schools remain low, especially in fragile zones in the cities and rural areas, all due to numerous factors.
A strong educational system is one that provides an appropriate learning environment for both girls and boys and ensures that students in the school have an awareness of gender equality when they leave it.
Raising girls and boys and ensuring they can learn in an equal and supportive environment in school leads to many benefits for girls and boys themselves, their families, and their communities and societies. In addition, gender equality in education has a multiplier effect, which makes an impact on the future opportunities and outcomes in relation to economic growth, good health, well-being, and poverty reduction. In this context, the project “Hya in school” came to promote gender equality in schools in Morocco.
The main goal of the “Hya in school” project is to raise awareness of the importance of gender equality in education. Furthermore, to provide tools such as kits, guides, workshops, and videos; to ensure training as other forms of education; and to deliver devices enabling schools and students to develop the skills necessary to be active, productive, and creative.
The organization Women for Diversity and Peace (WDP) argues that gender equality is not only a human right, but it also has enormous benefits for a sustainable society. For that, and in order to be an active actor in the Moroccan civil society, the co-founders of WDP Nadia Ramdani and Nezha Sadik decided to launch the first activities of the organization with the project “Hya in school” in December 2019.
The project “Hya in school” gave training for more than 450 girls and boys in both schools and recreation centers, as well as shed light on gender inequality in education. The project was planned to continue with training until the end of the year 2020, but with the present Coronavirus situation, the strategic vision has changed, and the need for digitalization now becomes necessary.
Today, “Hya in school” continues, but digitally, which is a new challenge for Women for Diversity and Peace as well as Moroccan civil society.
Besides the fact of the difficulties of the Coronavirus time, Women for Diversity and Peace believes strongly that educating girls and boys on gender equality in schools do have many multiplier effects, one of them being the environmental effect. By educating girls and boys, we educate a future family, and we create a society with an efficient environment for justice, creativity, and freedom.
