Dar Si Hmad for Development, Education and Culture is an independent nonprofit organization founded in 2010 promoting local culture and sustainable initiatives through education and the integration of scientific ingenuity in Southwest Morocco. We operate North Africa's largest fog harvesting project, providing villages with access to potable water. Our Water School and Girls' E-Learning Programs build capacity in the Anti-Atlas Mountains. Through our Ethnographic Field School, researchers and students engage with local communities in Agadir, Sidi Ifni, and the rural Aït Baamrane region for meaningful cross-cultural exchange.

Friday, September 27, 2019

From the Logbook: Employees of DSH Tell their Stories/ Soufian Aaraichi, Project Manager

Within and beyond languages

An intercultural team can be of great advantage when it comes to solving complex problems, as different points of view are coming together. At the same time, cultural diversity comes along with some challenges. We often underestimate the cultural implications to achieve such cooperation.
 
Working with an anthropologist and my first female director, always motivated to recruit collaborators of different cultures together and work as one team, is like handing a set of watercolors to a sketch artist who has always worked with charcoal. Amazigh, Arab, French, American and other cultures opened a whole new range of possibilities and boosts our creativity to decision making and problem solving. However, the applied language appears to be a further problem in communication during our meetings and internal/external communication as we always need intermediator with mono-langual colleagues. While almost 60 percent of the work we do is in English (with some mixing here and there), the language abilities vary greatly.
As project manager/coordinator, I have found myself developing my communication skills and language without realizing in it, swinging with four languages a day. The consequences are often misinterpretations and misunderstandings. It is frustrating and sometimes causes tention! I learn to overcome this challenge by recognising and appreciating the differences and similarities and learning how to deal with them.

I do appreciate to be exposed to intercultural team at Dar Si Hmad and I have experienced how it can be of great advantage. Every culture is unique so there are differences between every single culture. But instead of complaining about these differences, such creative diversity is embraced and integrated into our work concept. By doing this many problems can simply be overcome.

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