About HAF 
|
|
Dear Friend: |
Being founded by former Peace Corps Volunteers in 2000, HAF is dedicated to the participatory approach to development. This means that local communities determine - through a series interactive planning activities and dialogue - and manage their own projects. We assist them by facilitating community meetings and providing technical and financial support to their projects.
Thus, HAF's 1 Million Tree Campaign (of which 320,000 have so far been planted benefiting approximately 30,000 people) was born from countless community meetings in different provinces of Morocco that identified fruit tree agriculture as a top priority; HAF's dedication to clean drinking water (halving infant mortality in a population of 3,000 people) grew from rural mothers and fathers expressing their grief over the loss of their young children from water born diseases; and HAF's participatory training Center in partnership with Hassan II University in Mohammedia (to date, transferring skills with 50 university students and communal council members) came about from Moroccan people's desire for greater self-reliance and the ability to facilitate their own meetings. We have also responded to help create initiatives determined by women and youth to help meet their important needs. We realize that to scale-up the HAF approach, an ever growing number of facilitators of community planning meetings is needed.
In brief, HAF facilitates and trains facilitators in the participatory approach to community development, and helps to establish the priority projects that are designed in that process. Further, since we train people in the public and private sectors using experiential methods ("learn by doing") with actual communities, the training workshops themselves result in development projects that improve people's lives. To coordinate and develop curriculum for the training programs, HAF created the Center for Community Consensus-Building and Sustainable Development in partnership with the Faculty of Law, Economics, and Social Sciences of Hassan II University in Mohammedia, which is also home to HAF’s administration in Morocco.
Thankfully, we operate in the Moroccan context that is incredibly conducive and receptive to our approach to development. National Moroccan development frameworks - such as the National Initiative for Human Development, the Communal Charter, and regionalization - are all intended to be driven by the "participatory method." HAF's partnership with the High Commission of Waters and Forests has as its goal to bring participatory development to the communities that neighbor all ten of Morocco's national parks. Indeed, the sky and our collective will are our only limits!
We hope that you will participate in HAF's annual events in New York City and Washington - and soon in Casablanca. Please also join the more frequent Eat.Drink.Share gatherings to meet a diverse many others who care about and love Morocco and seek its best future. We also hope that HAF's work meets your own standard of sustainable human development for people in most need, and that its cause and 2011 projects are such that you will support and let others know about.
I thank you for reading this message and we at HAF wish you the best in your life's pursuits.
Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir
President of the High Atlas Foundation
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
