📝 Detailed information
🏢 About the local organisation
The volunteers will appreciate their everyday life habits and culture through practical and social involvement. They will get in touch with national volunteers, teachers and social workers in the center so that they can get involved in the community, not only inside the center but also outside, when they finish their work.
Essaouira is a tourist friendly town and is known to be a "cool" place. Is a small town, easy to walk around. Good roads and close proximity makes it easy also to visit places of interest in the region with local transports as buses and taxis. It is easy to find accomodation, restaurants and cafés. The medina has an interesting souk. Find beach amusements as wind- and kite surfing, horse- and camel riding....or just walk along the coasts.
💼 What the programme involves
There are between 60 and 65 children that go to the center everyday that don't attend to school or suffer from work exploitation. They give them all kind of living support although normally they live in their houses, they are against having them 24/7 in the center.
Thus the support arrangements are spread over three areas:
- Children who were found in the street, not attending to school.
- Children working to get money for their families, not able to attend school because of this reason.
- Children suffering from work exploitation.
The center has a preventive axis: day care for children who require professional counseling, enrollment in non-formal education, school re-enrollment and administrative and legal assistance especially for non-registered children marital status and children victims all kinds of violence.
Ways of insertion:
- Family support: When the problem is about broken families, the center looks for a better one that can host/adopt the child, so that they can guarantee their right to education, dignity etc.
- Personal: Providing the children that go to the center with food, cleaning etc (two women helping), 1 person in charge of administrative issues, 1 person accompanying families for the correct development of children's lives.
The mission and objectives of Bayti is:
The prevention of exclusion, violence and exploitation
The physical, social and legal protection of children
Psychosocial rehabilitation
Scholarization and family reintegration
Internal continuous education and training of other staff associations
The Advocacy for the promotion and defense of children's rights
Their values:
Respect for the principles of the International Convention of the 1989 Children's Rights: Best interests of the child, no discrimination, Right to life and development, to Identity, to health, to protection, to education, to participation...
VOLUNTEER’S TASKS
Volunteer's tasks:They will help the children out with every day's tasks. They will be in the center from 9 am to 1 pm, until the children go to public schools and then from 7 pm to 9 pm, when they will keep doing activities with them.
The volunteers are free to establish their own programs or activities, making up games for entertaining. They will help with scholar support, artistic activities, sports etc. When possible, if the volunteer has knowledge about it, he or she can help with administrative tasks or with the families follow up, learning about the way the center does it.
🏠 Accommodation on site
The volunteers will live in host families
📍 About the location
Bear in mind to contact CSM central branch (Rabat) so that we can arrange everything with our section in Essaouira, once we know your flight details, so we can give you exact indications and let our partners know when and where they should pick you up.
Essaouira has its own airport, so it would be good if they find good flight connections to get to it. Otherwise, they can get a flight to any other city and then it will be very easy to arrive by train and then by bus. There are direct bus combinations but no direct trains.
Casablanca's airport is easy to reach from most European, North American, and Asian capitols and serves several flights per day.
As for trains, check the ONCF website: http://www.oncf.ma/Pages/Accueil.aspx
The bus companies don't have a website, although if you go to the bus station you will find several going to Essaouira. As you should contact the central office first, they will find the best combination for you and arrange the meeting point.
The best possibility to reach Essaouira if you don't find a direct flight to it is to fly to Marrakech. The bus from there takes around 2 hours and a half. If you want to have a bus the CTM or Supratours can be recommended - both have comfortable busses, and both have several terminals in Marrakech, easy to find.
Someone from CSM will pick you up from the bus station in Essaouira.
⚠️ Requirements
The volunteers are not required to have any previous experience. The center is looking for enthusiastic, positive, patient and respectful people, who are willing to support children with different kind of integration problems to learn new skills and develop new relationships in ways that they choose and at a pace they feel comfortable with.
The volunteer must provide a copy of his/her criminal record.
ℹ️ Additional information
Bayti welcome and support children in difficult circumstances ranging between 6 and 17 years old. It offers them a range of benefits and pedagogical activities and fun. The management time will vary due to the complexity and nature of family problems, psychological profile and availability of the child and parental involvement and to the capacity available to the association.