My Nonprofit Reviews

Success Story: Sanad Association launched its community initiative

Two years ago, Halima, 52-years-old, had a severe headache. She lives in the Dakhla municipality. “As all the women do, I took some medicine that we have usually in our home and I drank some traditional drink. The pain didn’t stop but it increased day after day,” she said.

Hamila’s headache continued like this for a week. One day, “I lost concentration, then found that I had a cancer which needed an urgent surgery,” she explains. The surgery was successful, and now Hamila advises all women to never ignore their health problems.

She is now participating in a program with 84 other women from Dakhla, run by the Sanad Association and funded by the Middle East Partnership Initiative. In Arabic, “sanad” means to support or to be someone that can be leaned on. The association has taken on this role by providing accessible, close healthcare services for marginalized people, like these women, through this community initiative.

The association aims to protect the rights of women and promote their status within society. This includes, but isn’t limited to, social justice, equality in the right to economic and social participation, and raising awareness of women' s rights, combating sex-based discrimination and all forms of violence that prevent women from participating in public life and decision-making.

Four days of workshops were conducted in the two centers of the L’entraid Nationale. Nurses led these workshops, with a focus on healthy lifestyle and diseases that women are vulnerable to, like chronic illnesses, sexually transmitted diseases, high blood pressure, diabetes, skin diseases, and stress aggravation. Prevention of these conditions, as well as treatment and the follow-up procedure with doctors were also discussed.

Participants were given time to share their experiences and ask questions about their healthcare. This platform also enabled the nurses to hear about these womens’ experiences with healthcare in the past, enabling them to better understand how they can minimize fear and anxiety during check-ups.

Through community initiatives like this, women gain knowledge to control their own lives: they know what to do and where to go when they need medical help, and how to set boundaries. By empowering them and providing the know-how, women gain the autonomy to work independently, make choices in life and in society.

Kiran Johnson

The students gathered in a circle around a foot-deep hole in the earth. Majda Stitou, Facilitator in Psychosocial Empowerment at the High Atlas Foundation (HAF), held a sapling, explaining how to place the tree into the hole and pile soil around it in a way that would retain water. The circle of children around her tightened as they watched with wide eyes.

On Monday, January 15th, community members of the Ameghrass commune, in Amizmiz Dnasa, School groups Agni Unity, and the High Atlas Foundation (HAF) volunteers came together for HAF’s 2024 annual Tree Planting Day.

Community members dug holes for the transplanting of the saplings, HAF members showed the students how to plant them, and then the students were then given free reign to plant the trees and bury their roots.

I was initially tasked with taking photos of the event. I captured one photo of a group of children leaning in around one kid, who was scooping dirt with a shovel. Another photo of multiple kids holding a single sapling, each with one hand, as they slowly lowered it into the ground. Eventually, I got pulled into the organized chaos and kids gathered around me as I shoveled soil around a sapling.

I was surprised with how eager to learn about the trees these students were. They had listened with focused faces as Stitou explained the role that the trees played in the carbon cycle. Seeing their enthusiasm filled my heart with hope: If kids already know and can learn this easily to care about the earth, then our planet is in good hands.

Among all the negative environmental discussions that circulate the news and flood the internet, experiencing this environment and community development action firsthand reinvigorated me to be part of sustainable change. The environmental problems we face feel so large and looming, but focusing on creating local, community-level differences makes these issues seem more manageable. And, in the end, these actions add up to equal large, longer-lasting changes that will benefit the planet and its people.