EIS - Melanie Bahti

For this blog post I'm going to talk about one of the projects on which I've been working with some of the other people from the group. Aside from studying, we are all doing some form of community service or social work in Marrakesh. I've been working on a project with some of my friends called Élève Innovateur Social (EIS). The project, which in English is translated Students for Social Innovation, operates in Moroccan high schools to teach entrepreneurship and leadership skills in the context of a national competition for social projects in each school. Their goals, officially, are:

1.  To build and strengthen the capacity of social activists as a force in the transfer of knowledge and in coaching young people. 
2.  To raise awareness of the principles of social entrepreneurship as an effective tool for the development of a community of 100 teachers and professionals in education 
3. To encourage and inspire 320 young people between the ages of 15 to 18 years and to involve them in the challenge of the designing and implementing constantly evolving community projects.

Last year, the winning high school was Muahidine in Marrakesh. For their project, they set up an investment bank within their school, and invested people's money in a snack bar at their school. With the profits, they were able to buy bicycles and bus passes for students who live far away and can't afford transportation. The key to this project's success was that it was both innovative and had a direct impact on the school - the money came from the students, and was invested by the students, who used the profits generated to help other students directly.
This organization is relatively new. Last year there were teams from only six Marrakshi high schools, and this year we've expanded that number to ten, in the hopes that it will grow more in the future. The schools will compete against one another in a regional competition, and the winner will advance to the national competition along with winners from Casablanca and other cities.
Our work with the organization has many facets. We have meetings weekly, and right now we're organizing an open house conference to mark the official kick-off of the competition. Some of the work that we do is focussed on the logistics of things like the conference and our visits to schools. In the schools we're currently in the process of finding teachers to supervise the projects in each school, and of selecting the students to be on each team. This involves visiting the schools once a week or more, communicating with teachers and administrators, and presenting information about EIS to students.
Another part of our work with EIS has to do with the philosophy behind the organization. We really want the process of coming up with a project to be a learning experience for the students, and for them to feel inspired to work for social development in the future. To that end, we want the projects to be really connected to the school, for their effects to be long lasting and respond to real needs in the community, and for the students to learn to think creatively to find ways to meet these needs.
I've really enjoyed working on this project for several reasons. It's been a great way to get to know more Moroccans around my age (the people coordinating EIS in Marrakesh are university and high school students), and to see more of Marrakesh by visiting schools. I've enjoyed hearing about the projects that students have come up with in the past, and it's given me more insight into Moroccan society. I also really like learning about the educative system in Morocco, which I'll get to continue in a few weeks - one of the guys in EIS has made arrangements for me and a few others to visit his nursery and primary schools so we can get more insight.
Here's a link to more information about the group. It's been amazing to work with them so far and I'm sad that I won't be able to keep working on it for very long, since I'm leaving soon.
EIS Facebook Page