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HAF Project Coordinator Ouafa Elbargui tells of the plantings at 4 schools, concluding the 2012 planting season

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Blog
byOuafa Elbargui
onApril 7, 2018
In April-May 2012, Sami’s Project completed this year’s planting season with activities in 4 schools in Ouirgane rural commune, Al Haouz Province. HAF’s project team, students, teachers and managers of the schools, accompanied by some members of students’ parents’ association and some villagers participated together in planting the trees. In each school, HAF’s staff explained Sami’s project and HAF’s work to the school children, while the teachers made the students aware about the importance of the tree and the different benefits we get from it. The professional farmers of each school community showed the students how to dig the holes and how to position and care after a tree in their school yards.
Personally, I enjoyed the three days of sharing with these students – girls and boys from different ages and grades – the inspiring beautiful moments of tree planting. I kept observing passionately the joy and glory shining from their eyes while holding each tree and removing the black plastic carefully from its roots to the ending moment when they put it firmly into the hole and covered its roots with soil.		 Sami’s Project has a goal to plant 4,000 fruit and nut trees with young Moroccan school children in 96 participating Moroccan schools and villages.

During this first planting season, (Jan-April 2012) you helped to plant the first 650 trees with the students, staff and parents’ associations of 5 schools.
The school manager and teachers at Ouirgane elementary school stated that they were very happy and lucky, for their school is one of the
selected schools to be planted by the help of HAF. The Ouirgane Middle school students feel very satisfied, especially when some students tried to make a logical link between their theoretical studies at school about plants, the techniques of tree planting they learnt from their fathers, as most of them are sons of farmers, and the practical exercises they did during that moment of planting.Sami’s Project strengthens the relationship between these children and their environment. It is by planting a tree in a school yard or in one’s family’s orchard, and by maintaining it and caring deeply about it , these children can appreciate the benefits of this tree, perceive the importance of the environment and life in general; they can also learn how to protect and maintain their Earth as our original mother. This is what was explicitly shown in all of these students actions and deeds when digging holes, and when holding, planting and watering trees; the whole procedure from the beginning to the end is a sort of an interaction between kids and trees, between future and life.

Finally, on behalf of these students and HAF, I’d like to thank a lot the Elkouhen Family, who devote their time and effort to offer these valuable trees to these Moroccan elementary schools in memory of their small child Sami, and I’d like to thank also all the potential donors, who keep contributing their money day after day to make “Sami’s Project: Trees for kids” go on.