Summer Tech Camp 2019: Another Succesful Edition

Written by DSH intern, Ms. Salwa El Haouti

Additional to the multiple events Dar Si Hmad embraced during June of this year, the last week of the month has also witnessed the completion of the second edition of the Summer Tech Camp with satisfactory results. This educational program, which aimed at initiating underprivileged teenage girls to the digital world, also served girls with average prior knowledge on the use of the internet.

Although the main focus of this instructional program was the teaching of technology as its name indicates, the syllabi developed for the teenage beneficiaries comprised a number of other concerns all of which would certainly serve them on both the short term, as high school students, and the long term as active members in the job market and the society.

The first day of the camp was an opportunity for the beneficiaries to know one another and for the instructors to present an overall of the schedule of the week before inciting the girls to create their own classroom constitution. That session was also marked with the introduction to the technical jargon in relation to the computer, starting from the components of the hardware to the essential terminology that pertains to its software. The girls were also taught some ABC’s on surfing the web and were assigned some Web quests as a practice. Watching a Ted talk beforehand on the merits of being an IT girl and discussing it also contributed to maximizing the attention and interest of the Summer Tech Camp’s beneficiaries.

Day 2 was a continuation of the previous day’s lesson. This time, the girls were initiated to the web extensions and were offered examples on the ones they will most benefit from as young web browsers. Since all the girls are about to enter high school, it was necessary to show them how to use Google Docs and Google Slides. Above all, they were further instructed on how to detect real news and information from fake ones using internet tools, as they will be assigned to do divers researches from high school onward, all by giving the credit to the publisher of any content in order not to commit any plagiarism.

The third day of the summer tech camp started outdoors by visiting the local Amazighi museum of Agadir. This visit was an opportunity for the girls to learn and rectify many fallacious and erroneous ideas they once had on the Amazighi culture and history. The tour they had was intentionally planned to stimulate the girls’ curiosity on what one can learn in the museums and thus feel eager to visit more of them. Back in Dar Si Hmad, we guided them to websites where they could have a virtual 3D visit to internationally known museums such as the Louvre Museum in Paris. Having access to such content would definitely reinforce their overall historical and cultural knowledge, which will indeed benefit them throughout their lives. The afternoon of that session covered the right techniques of taking pictures and shooting a video, and also guided the girls to some editing platforms where they could modify and improve the quality of their pictures or make a short video film.

On the fourth day of the program, the girls demonstrated great interest and engagement with the course content. That day was consecrated to coding and Artificial Intelligence and had included many tasks for practice. The learners were then directed to some beginners’ coding websites, where they could learn and also practice the coding as they did inside the classroom. Each young girl by the end of the session has created an HTML web page, which comprised a head and a body where pictures and videos were also attached. In the last quarter of the day’s program, the focus was mainly put on the AI where the girls expressed clear astonishment at the level the technological field has reached.

The morning of day five was spent in the beach of Agadir. The girls had a blast playing competitive games with one another. They clearly needed a pause from the serious subjects they have tackled in class the previous days. The afternoon was also spared for them to make their own DIY projects where they gave vent to their creativity.

Similarly to the fourth day, the sixth one also evoked the engagement of the girls, but this time in deep discussion about themselves, how much do they know about their strengths and weaknesses and to what extent do they exploit their potential. The girls complained about the poor orientation they get in their schools about the educational prospects ahead of them, the organizing team of the camp also held a session of orientation where the girls’ questions and ambiguities were finally clarified. Moreover, scholarships’ opportunities for both high school and university students were also presented to the beneficiaries of the program, as they were also provided with tips on how to maximize their chances of getting one.

Day 7 was the last day of the camp and it was a chance for the girls to demonstrate what they had acquired throughout the week. The participants did a power point presentation on one of the various matters, which were treated during the program. The presentations were pretty inventive and originative as they tackled what they have learned from different perspectives.

Since this day marked the end of the camp, it, of course, included a number of fun activities before the participation certificates were given to the young beneficiaries. By all accounts, the week’s program described above is indeed a strong evidence on how successful the Summer Tech Camp of the year 2019 has been.

RISE Citizen Journalism Closing Ceremony

Written by DSH intern, Ms. Salwa El Haouti

Group picture of the Graduated RISERs

It was ten in the morning when RISE participants of this year’s edition started gathering in Dar Si Hmad’s conference room. As they all came packed with journalistic realizations to present during the closing ceremony, they also took great delight in gathering again with their fellow RISERS with whom they have shared this incredible journey.

When the small talks and chit-chats began to end, the presentations started taking place.  While attending the ceremony, one would hardly fail to notice the pride and contentment that RISE organizers and facilitators expressed towards the satisfactory work that the young ‘’future citizen journalists’’ have demonstrated. The realizations varied from articles and op-eds on the scams that tourists face in Agadir to expressive photographs on homelessness in the city. 

Ms. Hasna Belkdim during her presentation

The journalistic realizations of the risers also included audio-visual reportages, one of which had absorbingly conveyed the idea of losing the sense of guilt and how such a thing can result in ingrained heedless and defective habits. Podcasts were also produced for this closing ceremony. One of them tackled the issue of using chemical products in the agricultural domain, and further inspected their aftereffects on the environment and the laborers of the fields. Overall, the risers made use of different means of communication to discuss and report divers’ topics and matters.

RISE 2019 closing ceremony was marked by two breaks. The first one was a game in which everybody had to disperse in the room and walk randomly in different directions. Once the signal is given by the coordinator of the activity, each person had to join the closest person walking near them. When assembled, they had to find out three mutual things between them and share them with the class. In the second round of the game, the two regrouped participants had to start the walking again until they are told to gather with the closest duo to them but this time to learn four non-previously mentioned common things between them. 

The final reflections game 

The activity carried on the same way until all the participants ended up making one large circle and trying to discover as many mutual things between them as possible. It was gladdening to learn that everyone, spoke Darija pretty well, though not everybody was Moroccan or grew up in Morocco. The second break, on the other hand, was a moment of food sharing on the rooftop of the building where a buffet of finger food and drinks were served.

The closing ceremony of RISE 2019 was concluded with Mrs.Bargach’s word and that of all the organizing team members of this year’s RISE program, namely MS.Mazoud, MS. Arjdal, MS.Tyler and MS.Elboute. The time left afterward was an opportunity for all the beneficiaries of the program and their trainers to express their gratitude to anyone in the room that they feel they deserve a special word of kindness. And of course, like any other final congregation of a group of people, the risers felt more connected to one another during the ceremony than any other day of the training. They expressed strong willingness to stay in touch with one another and even conceived and considered starting a new group project of citizen journalists.

Ms. Oumaima Maghfour accepting her certificate

RISE Citizen Journalism 2019: Session 6, 7 and 8 Run Down

Written by Ms. Hafida Mazoud

Group picture with Peace Corps Volunteer Ms. Cassandra

We cannot believe how quickly time flies! It is already Week 8, and we have one more extra session. The upcoming meeting with our all of our RISERs will be at the Closing Ceremony. Before jumping on how this session went, let us first give you a brief recap.

The fifth session that was conducted back on May 19th was about photojournalism. We invited a Peace Corps Volunteer, Ms. Cassandra Broadwing, to facilitate this session. The objective of this session was to enable the RISERs to identify the components of a compelling image to articulate the ethics of photojournalism and to pitch their own ideas for a photo essay to promote social change and social justice in Agadir.  

Ms. Cassandra started the session by projecting the photo of an Afghan girl taken by Steve McCurry. She asked our participants if they recognized the picture first and what they could describe by taking a closer look. After she then told them about her story and projected a short video documenting the rest of the story about this girl and how 17 years later the National Geographic team found the girl and took the second picture of her.

The Egg Activity

Between the two pictures, that girl had faced and experienced many things, and her unrequested fame didn’t help her but instead made her life even harder. This led our facilitator to start a discussion about whether what the photographer leaves out of the image is just as important as what he or she captures. She also addressed the strengths of using photography to tell stories as well as its weaknesses.

This session was an opportunity for the participants to learn about the elements of photography, what makes a photo compelling and how a photo can make you feel something. Ms. Cassandra asked one of the participants to help her do an activity where the participants shined a light on an egg with a drawn face in order to use light to portray an evil face, a sad face, or a happy, angelic face just by changing the light angles.

Photojournalism is photography, but the reverse is not necessarily true. To illustrate the differences between these two concepts, they talked about photojournalism and ethics, empathy, media bias, and how it is a journalist's duty to remain emotionally aware and empathetic.

Before closing this session, we gave a handout to our participants that helped them brainstorm the idea they want to tackle in their photo essay assignment and explained the tools and the data they need in order to research the idea.

RISERs taking shots of their partners

Video Journalism was the theme of the following session. The session was led by Ms. Katie Tyler and our intern Ms. Imane Arjdal who helped our RISERs define what is videojournalism and its different forms. Later, they were introduced to the different phases of videojournalism from pre-production, production, and post-production.

Practicing videojournalism as an amateur or a professional was also brought up during the discussion. This led to explaining what digital and visual storytelling is, its ABCs and how you can exercise these principles through video production. We also covered how video editing can help to refine the final product to achieve a smooth, unbroken flow of the narrative.

In regard to the narrative, we talked about narration and the use of a strong narrative voice. As an example, we played a video of Morgan Freeman and studied how the use of his voice gives a different perspective for the story.

We are not contradicting with what we said above, but we always love to challenge our RISERs’ creativity, and we asked them to produce a video with a journalistic approach about any topic they want without spoken words. They could use subtitles, infographics or background music to help deliver their story. 

Game time during the session

Now we arrived to the eighth week which was the last taught session of the RISE Citizen Journalism Program 2019. This session was about environmental journalism, and its goal was to show that the environment is not a faraway issue that only affect glaciers, but it contains crises that touch us every day, and this is why having a journalistic coverage is a must!

We then distributed two different printed articles and asked the participants to compare the different writing styles, such as whether the style was descriptive, narrative, or both. One of the articles we chose for them was about how climate change is creating a rise of child brides. They were blown away by the connection and realized that if they analyze many environmental issues, they would find a direct consequence of that issue in their lives or the lives of others around them. We concluded this session by watching a video that discusses the differences between facts and opinion as well as and what is truth.

The participants requested many times to conduct a session where they can learn about how to study abroad and find scholarships. Our RISE team could not be happier to answer their request and provide them with the opportunity to discuss and learn more about this topic for one more extra informative session organized during the first week of Ramadan. 

Group photo with Ms. Tasnim

RISE Citizen Journalism 2019: Recap of the 2nd, 3rd and the 4th Sessions!

Written by Ms. Mazoud and Ms.Arjdal

RISE Citizen Journalism 2019 and RISE team are committed to giving our participants all the proper training to become young citizen journalists and we are also committed to keeping you updated on how our programs are going on.

During our second RISE session, led by Ms. Tasnim Elboute, she introduced our participants to the structure of good storytelling and how to enhance the way of storytelling in journalism. We started the session with an icebreaker to go past the barriers between our participants and to enable them to be more open during the discussions. We watched then a video of a stand-up comedy in English to show the aspect of good storytelling not just in written pieces, but also in oral ones. Later, our RISERs had to brainstorm and find the key differences and similarities between the two forms of storytelling.

We learned more about what are the elements that make a story “make-sense” and what the elements of a story are. The participants were introduced to different story structures they can follow and Ms. Tasnim gave them an example of a Juha story and how Freytag’s Pyramid exhibited in it.

Our participants were previously asked to read different Investigative Journalism pieces and during the session, they discussed their thoughts, reactions to the stories. They also identified the elements of the story they thought were compelling and they ended the discussion by citing the elements they think compose a good investigative article.

Each session we give our participants an assignment to enhance their writing skills and motivate them to be creative. Our assignment for this session was to write a short story on any topic they like. We gave them some ideas for the story, such that it can include any personal experiences about school, gender, education, the environment, etc.  

The following week, the session was dedicated to learning about writing Mechanics and The Opinion-Editorial (OpEd, for short). Ms. Katie Tyler started the session by asking when is opinion relevant in media. Following this, she taught them about the uses of pathos, ethos, and logos also known as the Aristoteles “mode for persuasion.”  As an exercise, our participants were asked to highlight where the author in each of the articles uses these tactics.

We later explained to the participants the importance of articulating their motives and how to use them during writing. This session was full of interactive activities and group work like when the RISERs had to read an op-ed and identify the motivating moves that the author used. At the end they learned how to refine an argument and work on a thesis and that a thesis does more than just point out something they can observe, instead, it creates an argument that builds from one point to the next.

In the fourth session, we moved out from the written form of journalism and we decided to give a glance to the world of audio journalism. we started first our session by discussing the differences and similarities between podcasting and broadcasting.

As known one of the most important things that any podcaster should know and master the art of conducting an interview, and that why we decided to teach first our RISERs about the fundamental techniques to become a good interviewer. Also, they were introduced to active listening methods that will make the interviewee more engaged during an interview. To practice what they have learned, we organized a short activity where our RISERs formed groups of three. Each RISER picked a piece of paper out of a hat and enact a scenario the RISE team created for them with a partner. Each person in the group rotated between taking on the roles of the listener, the speaker, and the observer.

Summing up the session, Ms. Katie shared the tools our participants might need for getting a better sound and also showed them how to use a free audio editing software. We are looking forward to the next sessions and please stay tuned on our social media to get updates and know more about the RISE Citizen Journalism 2019 sessions and stories.

RISE Citizen Journalism 2019: The Two First Weeks

Written by our intern Ms. Katie Tyler 

Risers during the workshops

With the rise of social media, we live in a world where citizens have more power than ever to share information and news. Citizens are now able to share their observations and thoughts with more people than has ever been possible before. Citizen journalism will become even more important in the future, as we need more voices from everyday people to speak out against environmental injustices that tend to affect marginalized communities disproportionately.

For the past decade Dar Si Hmad has been committed to empowering young people and protecting the environment of southern Morocco. Creating a new edition of RISE that specifically focused on citizen journalism and environmental justice seemed like the most effective way to meet both of these goals.

Our vision for this new edition of RISE is to equip young leaders in Agadir with the skills to effectively share stories and information both within their local communities and on a national and international platform as citizen journalists. We have recently wrapped up our first two sessions with our new class of RISERs! 

During our orientation session, we got to know our RISE participants and discuss our hopes and goals for this workshop series. We played a lot of different games to learn each other’s names and get to know about our interests and aspirations. For one game, we passed around a roll of toilet paper and instructed RISERs to “take as much as they needed.” When we finished passing around the roll, we told them that they had to tell the group one fact about themselves for each piece of toilet paper they took!

Besides spending time getting to know each other, we spent time on building a new community of dedicated citizen journalists. We wrote a constitution for the rules that would shape our RISE community and agreed to uphold this social contract. We made goals for our involvement and left with a clearer vision of the kinds of citizen journalists we wanted to become.

During the second week of programming, we focused on journalistic ethics. Using the guidelines from the Society of Professional Journalists as a model for our curriculum, we explored the different facets of ethics in journalism. Because Dar Si Hmad believes that students learn more if they are involved in activities and must think for themselves, we included many interactive activities. 

We had one activity where participants read real-life news articles and had to use their critical reading skills to investigate whether the articles were fake news or real headlines. We also encouraged participants to work together on teams. For our session on minimizing harm as journalists, we presented groups with different ethical scenarios in which they had to decide whether to grant interview subjects anonymity, and if so, how they would take measures to protect their subjects’ identities.

Of course, we made time for fun games so that we could continue to bond as a group! We created a BINGO sheet where each square had a characteristic or attribute (such as: “Never had a cavity” “Has three siblings” “Plays soccer”). Participants were instructed to find different RISERs who could sign the different squares that contained an attribute that described him or herself. Whoever could find enough RISERs who fit the different descriptions so that their BINGO sheet had a complete signature in a horizontal, diagonal, or vertical line would win!

As a facilitator I also learned a lot from these RISE sessions. All the participants have very thoughtful perspectives on the value and uses of citizen journalism and have articulate visions for how they want to create change in their communities. I am very excited to continue working with our RISE participants on honing their skills as journalists. They already have so many exciting stories to share, so I can’t wait to sharpen their storytelling abilities and work with them to investigate new stories to spread! 

  

Preparing for RISE Citizen Journalism 2019!

Written by DSH Intern: Imane Arjdal

After so many months, the time has finally come to launch our newest edition of the RISE program. Since 2013, during each academic year, Dar Si Hmad offers a training program for various beneficiaries, students, and apprentices living in Agadir that contains workshops, conferences and personal and professional development activities that run for 2 to 6 months.

This year marks the seventh edition of RISE program which will be under the theme of citizen journalism. This program aims to offer training on how to use media to promote environmental justice and a wide range of social issues including educational and global topics.

This edition of the RISE program will include sessions on citizen journalism ethics, writing techniques, photojournalism, videojournalism, podcasting, broadcasting, and many other interesting topics. This year’s RISE program will be different from the traditional classroom sessions and will instead give the beneficiaries the best knowledge in a welcoming atmosphere filled with dialogue, positivity, and support.

At the end of each session, participants will have to do an assignment to apply what they have learned and eventually to work toward publishable contents. Late June will mark the conclusion of the program, participants will present final projects in order to graduate the program.

We launched the applications on February 14th. We were surprised by the number of applicants we received and of the high quality of the applications. We selected more than forty applicants to be interviewed. Through the interview, we knew more about our potential risers, their background, their interests and their motivation for the program.

After many discussions, we were finally able to decide the foremost and best-suited applicants based on their applications, essays, and performance during the interview. We ultimately selected 24 applicants that showed the most motivation for the program.

Dar Si Hmad’s team is really excited for this year’s RISE program on Citizen Journalism, and we can’t wait to meet the participants and for them to start a new journey of knowledge, support, gaining new skills, setting objectives, and experimenting with new approaches that will help them become creators of their own future.  

Capacity Building Program: First two workshops!

Written by DSH Fellow: Katherine Tyler

Our trainer Zainab mentoring a group of participants

A lot of exciting activities have been happening at the Capacity Building Project since we first posted about it! The second week of December marked the second workshop for the capacity building workshop for NGOs after our first workshop on Governance and Administration in November.  Our trainer Zineb led a module on Human Resources Management, and our trainer Mustapha led a workshop on Financial Management. We had a lot of ground on management training to cover, and our staff, trainers, and participants rose to the challenge with grace and enthusiasm!

When we are planning the content for these workshops, we make it a priority to include interactive activities. We want to be able to hold people’s attention for an entire daylong event after all the participants already been working for an entire week-- so long lectures are not going to engage our audience very well!

When I was identifying a volunteer’s motivation to serve, I found out that there are three motivations to volunteer: a spiritual or personal connection to the cause, a desire to build skills or gain experience, and an interest in making social connections.

Ilham, a Rise Alumna during her participation in our activities 

When I was drafting our module on volunteer management, my co-manager Hafida pointed out that Dar Si Hmad has already worked with some strong volunteers who could share their experiences and expose our participants to more perspectives on how NGOs can best engage their volunteers. So, we designed a module where we invited three alumni from Dar Si Hmad’s RISE program, a youth empowerment training series, to adopt the profiles of three imaginary volunteers who had different motivations to serve and currently experiencing some difficulties in their work performance. The participants were placed into three groups and took on the role of an NGO board and had to brainstorm solutions so that they could better engage the different volunteers.

Another goal of the Capacity Building Program for NGOs is to get a bunch of smart, ambitious people working to better their communities in the same room together to share ideas. For one session during the Financial Management module, we challenged NGO leaders to work in groups to brainstorm income-generating activities for an imaginary NGO that supports the Mikhaleen, workers who sort garbage for collection and recycling in major cities throughout Morocco.

The participants engaging in the workshop activities 

In addition to envisioning creative ideas to support the financial viability of this NGO, participants also had to assess whether this idea would generate a substantial profit for the NGO based on the project’s estimated start up and operating costs. When these participants were trying to brainstorm a feasible income generating activity, they shared their own professional experiences with each other and ultimately came up with a list of ideas that no one participant would have created entirely on his or her own. These NGO leaders are also getting to know each other better over the course of six months, so we hope that they will be creating mutually beneficial partnerships to support each other’s missions. 

Although a lot of our activities are based on responding to hypothetical situations, we have several strategies to have our participants apply their training in a practical manner. After each session, we assign homework for the participants to use what they have learned to benefit their NGO. One of the assignments from this past session was to have the participants write job descriptions for their staff and volunteer positions. This assignment will help NGO leaders better organize, delegate, and outline workers’ duties and responsibilities, improve their recruitment strategies and provide a template for providing feedback and performance reviews. Each NGO leader has also agreed to launch a new project or campaign based on the management training they have received from the Capacity Building Program.

Team building activities

There are so many people at Dar Si Hmad who work incredibly hard each month to make this workshop training series happen. In addition to working very closely with Hafida, Jamila, our Executive Director, provides feedback and guidance on how to structure the content more effectively. We also collaborate closely with our trainers to draw from their extensive experiences in NGO work so that we can share the most critical aspects of management with our participants in the most engaging format possible.

When it comes to running the logistics of our program, Hafida and I rely on Dar Si Hmad’s driver and caretaker, Abderrahman, to assist us with ironing out the details, which includes a lot of running errands and literal heavy lifting. Aatika works very hard to provide delicious meals to our participants and staff during the training sessions.

Our trainer Mustapha during the Financial Management workshop

There are so many people who have put a lot of time and energy into making the Capacity Building Program a reality, and I am so excited to be working with and learning from so many Moroccan dedicated to social impact.

If you are involved with civil society in Morocco and would like to get more involved with the Capacity Building Project, hang tight! We are planning to release a training manual for trainers and NGO leaders written in Arabic at the end of the project. And, hopefully, we will be able to launch a similar workshop training series again in the future.

The participants during the speed interviews activity

UIRMAL 2018: A Gateway For Other Interesting Opportunities

                    Written by RISE Alumnus & DSH grantee: Ayoub Nachat

Ayoub in the last day of the conference

Before I talk about my experience with Model Arab League, a short self-introduction would be helpful. My name is Ayoub Nachat, I am 24 years old, and I am a master's student majoring in Applied Linguistics and Language Studies at Ibn Zohr University.  I am an alumnus of the RISE program 2017/2018 edition. The Rise program was very rich and interesting in terms of knowledge and the different opportunities it brought me and other alumni. 

I found the application form for the conference on Dar Si Hmad's Rise Alumni group. It was a five-page application form where I had to introduce myself, my background, my previous experiences with Model United Nations (MUN) and write four essays on different topics. I already had previous experiences with MUNs before as a delegate and a chair as well, but Model Arab League (MAL) was an opportunity for me to go through an interesting new experience. As I expected, this opportunity caused me to notice many differences between MAL and MUN. 

Ayoub during the training

After filling out the application form online, I passed the first round and I was contacted by Dar Si Hmad's staff to sit for an interview. The interview was smooth and to the point. I was asked by the interviewer, many questions along the lines of: “introduce yourself, why do you think we should select you to be part of the conference?”, and “talk about your previous experiences in MUNs?” She has also explained to me everything that has to do with logistics and what is expected from me as a delegate at the conference. 

Days later, I received an acceptance email that said I was selected to be the head delegate of the delegation sponsored by Dar Si Hmad and Fulbrighter Anna to represent Ibn Zohr University in UIRIMAL in Rabat. One week later, we started the training sessions regarding MAL's procedures and topics. The trainings were rich, inclusive, and to the point as well, but it would have been better if our university had signed us to participate to have a longer period of training since the other delegations from other countries had started training months before. However, I am still thankful to Dar Si Hmad and Anna who signed us, sponsored us and trained us in a very limited time period.

Ayoub during his visit to the parliament

On November 1st, the delegation that consisted of 4 people, University Advisor Anna Cizek, Imane Arjdal, Intissar Blila, and I, left for Rabat. After we arrived the next day, we checked into the Université International de Rabat (UIR) dorms. Later, we went to meet the other delegates in order to go to the Moroccan parliament for a cultural visit. That was a very interesting experience for both Moroccan and other delegates from different countries since we all had the chance to learn many things about the political system of Morocco and how parliament works. 

I also had the chance to serve as a translator for the guide in the parliament who was explaining everything about the parliament institution, and that was very special and meant a lot to me. Later in the evening, the opening ceremony of the UIRMAL conference started, and different speeches were delivered by the organizers of the event. 

From left to right: Intissar, Anna and Ayoub

The next morning, we started the committee debates and discussions, and I was very eager to participate as much as possible and defend the stand of the country I was representing, which was Saudi Arabia. I always try to seize such opportunities to develop both my personal and professional skills. I also made many friendships and met new people, and I would like to advise the readers to grow their networks as much as possible in such events. You will meet new people who can really inspire you and make you see the world from another perspective. 

This conference was different from other MUN experiences I’ve had before. The procedures made me feel a little bit disconnected, but I worked hard to overcome that challenge by getting into debates and lobbying with other delegates. Additionally, I had to prepare for many different and complicated topics in a short amount of time and, luckily, I managed to do that in the free time during the conference. 

Ayoub with other participants at the conference

Besides the difficulties I faced, I really loved being a delegate in UIRIMAL. First, I had the chance to meet new young, ambitious, and very nice people. Since I arrived to the university, I never felt alone. In fact, at this moment while I am writing this blog, a young guy I met at this event just sent me a message.  Another advantage of this conference that I enjoyed was the academic training. It was not easy to participate in all the debates and discussions through speaking in public, working with others, and negotiating ideas, but I had to really challenge myself to do that and improve both my personal and professional skills.

Participating in Model Arab league was a pleasure and a great experience that has taught me a lot and I am willing to make this experience a gateway for other interesting opportunities, both for me and students in my community.

Ayoub in the MAL conference