International Women's Day Success Stories!

All over Morocco, in Dar Chababs, Nedi Neswis, and even the streets of Rabat, Peace Corps Volunteers and Moroccans celebrated International Women’s Day (IWD) on March 8th.

Volunteers participated in a wide variety of activities, fairs, and parties to celebrate Moroccan women. The GAD committee developed a variety of toolkits for IWD including toolkits on leadership, citizenship and volunteerism, women’s empowerment, and harassment. Many PCVs were able to use the toolkits and reported back exciting results!

Over the month of February, Tom and Jan Hunter centered their English classes on themes important to women. All of their classes culminated into a week-long IWD program focusing on women’s health, our GAD movie, and Moroccan women leaders. Many women didn't even know about the new female mayor of Marrakech, but they certainly knew about her after their successful celebration.

The Association Oxygene Ouarzazate and Kathy Howell-Burke organized a hugely successful day focusing on violence against women with over 130 people attending! She wrote about the event: “The Director of the Association Oxygene Ouarzazate (with my assistance) facilitated the screening of a 40-minute documentary titled "From Fear to Freedom: Ending Violence Against Women" by the Women's Learning Partnership. The video covered the various forms of violence, the negative impacts, legal and moral support and resources available, and strategies and partnerships to utilize in order to combat and end violence against women. All of these topics were discussed during the periodic pauses in the video and the guided discussion afterwards. What made this video and experience unique was that the documentary presented violence against women as a "Global Issue" not singling-out one country or culture. Also, the women attendees were able to confidentially voice their experiences, concerns, and ideas on how to proceed forward.”

To recognize IWD, Martha Fedorowicz hosted a two-day women’s festival at her Dar Chabab with a female lawyer, a female doctor, and 86 motivated Moroccan women. The women were able to ask the two professionals anonymous questions about their health and legal rights. The festival also included a panel of women speaking about artisanal works, a play on women’s empowerment, a fashion show, an aerobic workout, and even fit in a party! Martha said that, “the women told me afterward that they really appreciated having this opportunity and felt like they learned a lot of new things that no one had told them before… I think the women really appreciated having the opportunity to ask questions anonymously from both a lawyer and a doctor.”

Michael Willis hosted an event on sexual harassment with 25 women using the GAD committee’s sexual harassment toolkit. After a skit about stopping harassment, the women shared their own experiences with sexual harassment, and created a red stop sign collage loudly proclaiming sexual harassment is unacceptable.

In Berkane, Krista Jorstad put together a leadership skills conference for the women of her Nedi Neswi.  Krista and her counterpart “asked them to think about women leaders in their own lives. Because of their age, most picked their mothers. We then did an art activity to make letters for their moms thanking them for their hard work.” The women then made some artwork for their mothers and watched the “You Can Dream” video. Krista was especially impressed with what happened afterwards: “At one point, several of the participants remarked that Berkane has a lot of educational opportunities for women to improve themselves and they would like to put what they have learned to use by giving back to the community.”

Some volunteers found new counterparts through their IWD events. After co-hosting a launch party for a new association, Carrie Thomson found she, “was impressed by how our new contact was motivated to help her fellow women improve their lives.”

Other volunteers enabled women in their sites to be leaders in their

community. Originally, Leslie Dias planned on facilitating a discussion about sexual harassment using the sexual harassment toolkit provided by the GAD committee. When Leslie shared her materials and ambitions the head of the association she was working with said that she wanted to facilitate the discussions on sexual harassment using the GAD toolkit and her own material. Leslie then led an art activity where women wrote about how they felt about sexual harassment and created a chain against sexual harassment using their papers. Leslie writes, “They were all buzzing and super excited when we finished. They said they hadn't done something that productive with that many young girls in a very long time. We are hoping to re-create the event by doing a one-day workshop once a month with a different theme each month. This particular association was amazing, but it happened to coincide with a day the Nedi Neswi was also holding an event, so hopefully the next one can be even bigger and more inclusive!” Leslie’s event was so successful it even made it into the local newspaper.

Over 45 volunteers hosted International Women’s Day events in their sites. Hundreds of women and men learned about health, leadership, harassment, and their rights. With this knowledge Moroccans can empower the future female teachers, lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, and leaders to take even bolder steps in future International Women’s Days.