Dreamscheme begins in Morocco .... the story so far .....

Our pilot project ran from 7th January to 4th February 2008 :) where we ran a small trial run of Dreamscheme in Essaouira, and ran a trial week renovating the garden in a neighbourhood called Chaibi, cleared up several huge wheelybins full of litter and broken glass and repainted the walls, and planted some flowers and seeds to come up during the summer - and afterwards went on a trip to Sidi Kaouki with 20 young people who had put in 10 hours or more of hard work :) Thankyou very much to all the young people who were involved. We have begun building Dreamscheme in Morocco :) HOORAY

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All the young people participated really well and the adults changed their views over the week's work from initially thinking it would never work and was a waste of time, to thanking us afterwards for what a huge difference even just a week made in terms of the relations between older and younger people and the attitudes towards respecting the space. Everyone was also incredibly pleased to be able to go on a trip to Sidi Kaouki in return for all their hard work digging, watering, litterpicking and painting all week.


It's about linking communities together and reminding everyone that we live very different lives sometimes in terms of culture but we are all the same.

It's about having a really strong vision that I'd like to see groups of young people from organisations in the UK being able to come on trips to Morocco and work for a week or something with the Dreamscheme young people in Essaouira, and vice versa, and experience different cultures and ways of life and find new friends across the world, develop links and broaden our horizons... We'll be doing things like sports activities, art and craft projects, poi making, circus/movement skills workshops, assertiveness and self esteem workshops, maintaining/enhancing community structures/keeping the place clean and tidy and all that, with the young people in Essaouira and whoever comes along to visit/joins the dreamscheme network and gets a points card.


And it's about showing to the world that young people can do fantastic things. (with 30 litres of paint, brushes, some seeds and flowers, gardening gloves and points on offer for hard work you can renovate an entire garden if you're 30 young people from "Dreamscheme Maroc equipe de Chaibi ... le premier equipe de Maroc" in little over 7 days' work with 2 work sessions per day ... look out UK Dreamschemers, the Morocco Dreamschemers are preparing to wipe the floor with their hard work and are ready to take you on!)

Next step is more development work before we're ready to submit our funding proposals for long-term funding...

We've been donated a swing by the really nice guys at www.bigwoodplay.com (yes it's an unashamed advert but I really recommend you go there if you ever want playground equipment) to go in the garden, which can be fitted in by the older young people who didn't take part in this bit of garden work in January and would like opportunities to become involved and make a difference to the space there too.

You can't see from the pictures which were taken right at the end of the clearing up mission, but the garden was completely covered all over with broken glass and rubbish when we arrived to start work and really being respected at the end by the young people who put in the hard work clearing it up and painting it...

Next stage of the project will be to return armed with our swing set parcel from bigwoodplay and get the older boys involved in building the swing in the garden, preparing the wood and cementing it in and constructing the swing from instructions, with a carpenter to help them learn a skill at the same time; and insha'Allah that should help this group of young people who are currently experiencing drug misuse and street related issues, find something positive to do with their time instead, and a swing to respect afterwards which should still be there for their own children to play on in years to come if well looked after insh'Allah - there is no publicly available play equipment for young people in Morocco at all apart from the odd bit of fenced off expensive-to-enter playing facilities which are so dear to get in they're mainly just for the tourists...

If you would like more information or feel you can help please contact us here: dreamscheme [at] green-spirit.co.uk
Feel free to browse our cafepress shop, natural health shop, or gift ideas section for ways in which you can support the project.

Essaouira Dreamscheme's website is here : www.essaouiradreamscheme.350.com

If you would like information on setting up a Dreamscheme project in your local area, this is the dreamscheme network