📝 Detailed information
🏢 About the local organisation
The center host several disabled children so the volunteers will appreciate their everyday life habits and culture through practical and social involvement. They will get in touch with national volunteers 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.
Rabat is the capital and fourth largest city of Morocco with an urban population of approximately 580,000. Rabat features a Mediterranean with Oceanic influence. Located along the Atlantic Ocean, Rabat has a mild, temperate climate, shifting from cool in winter to warm days in the summer months
The biggest place for theatre is the Theatre Mohammed V in the centre of the town. The city has a few official galleries and an archeological museum.
Many organizations are active in cultural and social issues.
Further information about the country will be attached in the National Profile form.
💼 What the programme involves
Disabled children:
- Help them with everyday life’s tasks: taking a shower, taking them for a walk, preparing their meals... social workers carry out these tasks. They are specialized in their particular disabilities: how they affect them, how they are treated and what to do in any case.
Orphans:
-Procedures of adoption, circumcision, feeding the babies, take them out, activities: swimming pool, sport outdoors.
VOLUNTEER’S TASKS
The volunteers will be able to participate in all kinds of everyday activities: help the disabled children taking a shower, taking them for a walk, preparing their meals... always accompanied by the social worker so he can explain them what to do in any moment and, should they wish so, explain them about their disabilities and how they affect them, how they are treated and what to do in any case.
Concerning the activities with orphans, they will be able to learn about the procedures of adoption, the circumcision, feed the babies, take them out... Sometimes they do some activities like taking them out once a week to the swimming pool or to do some sport outdoors. The volunteers can accompany them in all these activities.
They will be able to take initiative at all times; doing music or painting workshops and any activity that would stimulate them, always under the supervision of the social worker.
🏠 Accommodation on site
HOST SITUATION
Volunteers will be placed in host families. Further information will be given.
📍 About the location
HOW TO ARRIVE Rabat airport has a lot of flight connections. Once you get out of it, you will find a bus that costs 20 dirhams and that leaves you in front of the train station. You will find also several taxis that should take you to the city center. You can deal with them the exact point and the price, that should be 100 Dirhams.
Someone can go and pick you up from the airport for 150 Dirhams.
If you arrive to any other airport in Morocco, it will be easy for you to reach Rabat by train, just check the timetables on: www.oncf.ma
⚠️ Requirements
VOLUNTEER’S 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 disabilities 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.
🤝 Meeting point
The meeting point will be arranged by email before your arrival to Rabat, once you have passed them your flight details.
ℹ️ Additional information
AIMS OF THE PROJECT
The center Lalla Meryem is part of the Moroccan League for the protection of children. They host orphan children from when they are born until the age of 6 years old. Some mothers take them and leave them there because of their personal situations and they stay there until the center finds the right host family for them. They also host some children that (very sadly) people find abandoned in the street and take them there. Those who are handicapped often stay there until they die... the center takes care of them until then.
The can host up to 200 children, although there are currently 123, which 50 of them are handicapped. They suffer from IMC, trisomy 21 or down syndrome, motor handicaps – some of them are in wheelchairs- or mental disabilities that keeps them from having a normal life, like autism.
They all benefit from specialized social workers and doctors who work in the center taking care of them
The orphans in the center benefit from a social, medical and educational service in Rabat public and private schools (their education starts from when they reach the age of three years old, before that there are nurses in the school who feed them and take care of them in general).