Picture from our first psychosocial support and post-disaster empowerment workshop in Ait Youb village, Ijoukak municipality in the Al Haouz province.
Dear Partners and Friends,
We are in the fifth week since the September 8 earthquake struck central Morocco, causing devastating loss of life and vast damage.
Following the earthquake, we reached impacted areas to distribute essential supplies and encountered the heartbreaking new reality of the communities. Our relationships with the local people and their organizations in the High Atlas Mountains are over two decades deep, the origins of HAF staff members are from these areas, and this loss is directly experienced from among our own.
Your generous donations for relief and rebuilding (emotional and infrastructural) have made a major impact and have brought hope and new energy to those who have been impacted by this tragedy.
Our relief efforts remain ongoing. As of October 10, HAF has procured, transported, and distributed materials to 271 villages in 60 municipalities, providing 7,346 families with 286 tons of seriously needed supplies (food, warm clothing, blankets, and mattresses, hygiene products, school supplies, and solar lamps). HAF distributed 608 tents to 120 village communities (248 tents were hand-made by women in the Sahara region), but we urgently need many more tents that are large and water- and winter-proof.
With partners, we adapted IMAGINE workshops to provide psychosocial support and post-disaster empowerment. The months of workshops that are planned aim to focus on recovery strategies from trauma, which can affect stability, identity, and self-agency.
We are partnering to enhance access and capacities of communities to improve and safely manage their water, sanitation, and hygiene facilities and practices. We are also committed to long-term rebuilding in the coming days and years, especially for water infrastructure systems both for irrigation and drinking.
Thank you sincerely for your generous contributions. You are thousands of individuals delivering much-needed support alongside thousands of families in Morocco who are in the midst of real difficulty.
Organizational donors, we will thank you all at once in the next Newsletter. You are gifting the means for communities to forge their futures.
We wish you all very well.
Yours faithfully,
The High Atlas Foundation
Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir, President of the High Atlas Foundation, discusses how participatory interfaith dialogue is helping address people’s needs in rural Morocco and the enormity of the challenge in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake of 8 September 2023.