Meet Yahjabouha, the Woman Helping Improve Guelmim Through Social Work

Rabat – Throughout Morocco, cooperatives and social work associations have often taken on a lot of the responsibility involved in integrating women in the workforce and mending socio-economic gaps.

From teaching commercial skills, to academic endeavors like literacy classes, such community-driven initiatives have long been pillars of Morocco’s fight against inequality in the face of government inaction or populations’ apathy.

In Guelmim, a city in southern Morocco, 56-year-old Yahjabouha leads one such organization: The Zaouiat Cheikh Mohamed Limame development and cooperation association. Since its founding in 2014, the association has been able to expand its operations in training and teaching the women and children of Guelmim.

Yahjabouha spoke with Morocco World News about her experience, and the impact she thinks this kind of social work can have on the region.

Beginnings and Operations

Yahjabouha started her association in 2014 following floods in Guelmim that left more than 30 dead.

“We were conducting social work in a spontaneous, unorganized way. But in 2014, I established my association,” she tells MWN. “Its first goal was helping disadvantaged women and children in the douar [small town] where I lived.”

The association started with conducting literacy and religious studies classes for women, before expanding to Quran teaching for children using the traditional method of writing it on wooden boards.

Nowadays, Yahjabouha’s establishment teaches 47 young students the Quran.

Yahjabouha’s operation also aims to teach the region’s women tangible and useful skills for use in professional life. For instance, the association started conducting sewing classes with a professional and experienced teaching staff.

During the interview, she thanked the Moroccan Center for Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship (MCISE), a non-profit dedicated to supporting social work in Morocco as well as the  Council of the Guelmim-Oued Noun region.

“We found that there is a training camp for regional associations and cooperatives,” Yahjabouha told MWN, emphasizing that the formal training helped her manage her association better and maintain it as a financially viable operation.

As with many other activities and projects in the past two years, COVID-19 pandemic made a sizable dent in much of Yahjabouha’s social work. With her experience in the medical field herself, she worked as part of the testing and vaccination campaigns and saw the effects of the pandemic first hand.

While switching to an online method for the children’s Quran classes allowed the association to continue its operations, women’s classes were more affected, due to the lack of volunteering help.

The association was able to eventually switch back to in-person teaching for the children, with all social distancing measures in place, and Yahjabouha confirmed that she hopes establishing profitable programs for the women will help make their programs both more sustainable and consistent.

Read also: COVID-19: Morocco’s Agriculture Cooperative to Serve Needy Families

Regional Impact

For decades, local associations run by social entrepreneurs like Yahjabouha have played a vital role in providing opportunities for disadvantaged demographics, especially women who haven’t had a chance to go through a formal education.

“One of the problems we had in our region was a lack of education. The reason was that the poor children had to help their parents from a young school age, and women didn’t have a consistent income,” Yahjabouha says.

Women in the region suffered interruptions to their already limited incomes due to the COVID pandemic, as well as the effects of climate change on the agricultural output of those who work in the field.

Expressing her satisfaction with the MCISE partnership, Yahjabouha recounted how the association was able to get a more solid foundation, implementing new programs such as teaching their beneficiaries how to fish to gain additional income.

Yahjabouha also established a project under the name Malhafati (My Robe), creating a sewing and tailoring workshop for local women to learn and profit from their craft, while sticking to the traditional garb of the region.

For the future, Yahjabouha is aiming to focus more on projects and programs for Guelmim’s women.

“My ambition is for this project to be the best in the region,” she said, referring to her sewing project. She spoke of the region’s need for such a program, and emphasized that the region’s women are capable of driving these kinds of projects. “It will employ people, it will give these women a chance to work, and for their children to finish their education,” she added. “That is my ambition for this project.”

For the Love of the Job

For Yahjabouha, social work is a thankless job. Anyone hoping to get into the field must love the work and not expect anything in return, she stressed.

“As I always say, any work has to be done with love,” she told MWN. “And one shouldn’t wait to receive anything back. Not in one, two, or three years. “For me, it’s enough to see the happiness on the faces of those children and women.” She argued it’s also important for anyone who wants to join social work efforts to know their strengths and expertise. “If I know how to sew, I’ll work on sewing,” she said, citing past experiences with the association.

“That’s what we used to do. We worked with women, worked with children, we didn’t know our direction. But once you know your direction, you will definitely reach the goal.”

Social work continues to be an important pillar for development in Morocco, especially in rural regions where women don’t have adequate access to education and job opportunities.

Over the past few years, Morocco has reiterated its commitment to support such initiatives. In late 2021, the government announced a national program to establish agricultural cooperatives and boost their development.

Despite that, cooperatives and social work associations still require a lot of help to fulfill their full potential. Often born with low budgets and in underserved communities, these initiatives are still limited in how much they can solve.