Dakira - Moroccan Cultural Preservation
A USAID-funded participatory initiative preserving Morocco's multicultural heritage through community dialogue, archival digitization, and interfaith engagement across 6 regions.
A USAID-funded participatory initiative preserving Morocco's multicultural heritage through community dialogue, archival digitization, and interfaith engagement across 6 regions.
The Dakira program championed Morocco’s rich multicultural heritage while fostering interreligious and interethnic understanding. Through community-driven initiatives, experiential learning, heritage preservation, and intercultural dialogue, Dakira strengthened social cohesion and promoted the transmission of Morocco’s diverse cultural legacy across generations.
The program supported the documentation and preservation of both tangible and intangible heritage through educational activities, community engagement, archival digitization, cultural restoration projects, and heritage-based capacity building. By bringing together youth, educators, civil society actors, researchers, and local communities, Dakira created spaces for dialogue, learning, and shared stewardship of Morocco’s pluralistic history.
Dakira fostered locally anchored engagement across Morocco, strengthening connections between communities and their shared heritage.
From program inception through 2024, Dakira achieved significant milestones.
Dakira supported two major streams of tangible heritage work: a nationwide documentation effort conducted in partnership with ASOR, and the careful, hands-on restoration of a synagogue in the Drâa-Tafilalet region that had stood silent for decades.
In partnership with the American Society for Overseas Research (ASOR), Dakira conducted the most comprehensive documentation of Morocco's religious, ethnic, and minority (REM) heritage sites to date. Teams traversed the country to identify, photograph, assess, and record over 200 sites — Jewish cemeteries and mellah neighborhoods, Christian churches and cemeteries, Sufi shrines, Amazigh cultural spaces, and more. Each site was catalogued with location data, historical context, and condition assessment, creating a baseline for future preservation work
In the mountain town of Gourrama, a synagogue had stood in disrepair for years — a physical reminder of the Jewish community that once called this part of Morocco home. Through Dakira, HAF partnered with the Association des Amis du Judaïsme (AJM) and the Council of Jewish Communities of Morocco to restore the building: the prayer room, main entrance, and facade were all rehabilitated. The restored synagogue is now a site of memory — a place where history can be visited, discussed, and understood by new generations.
The most irreplaceable materials of any community are often the most fragile — handwritten registers, parish records, marriage certificates, personal documents accumulated over a century. Once lost, they cannot be recreated. Dakira made it a priority to work with institutional partners to preserve these materials through digitization, ensuring that Morocco's pluralistic past is accessible
In partnership with the Diocese of Rabat, Dakira supported the digital documentation of Christian archives spanning nearly a century of Morocco's pluralistic history. The project includes the preservation of over 95,380 baptismal records, 427 registries, 200,000 baptismal certificates, 100,000 marriage certificates, and various Catholic magazines. Beyond the baptismal and marriage records, the project also preserved issues of Ensemble magazine — published continuously since 1947 — which chronicles the life and reflection of Morocco's Christian community across generations.
These archives are now publicly accessible through the Diocese of Rabat's official website. A study day organized at Al Mowafaqa Institute formally presented the digitization project and opened it to broader scholarly engagement.
In collaboration with the Jewish Community of Marrakech and FamilySearch, Dakira preserved and digitized the civil and religious archives held across three of the city's most significant Jewish historical sites. At the Beth-El and Al Azama synagogues, as well as the Genizah of the Jewish cemetery, preservation spaces were reorganized with appropriate shelving, temperature control, and digital access tools. Two classrooms at Al Azama were refurbished to host ongoing Hebrew language and Moroccan Jewish history classes for tour guides and students.
Dakira engaged communities across Morocco through dialogue and cultural events that brought heritage to life. By combining interfaith discussions, site-based learning, and public programming, the initiative created inclusive spaces for people to explore shared histories and reflect on their identities.
Activities ranged from community dialogues at heritage sites and youth-led discussions to festivals, exhibitions, and cultural tours. These engagements connected diverse groups across generations and backgrounds, fostering mutual understanding, strengthening social cohesion, and encouraging active participation in preserving Morocco’s multicultural heritage.
Through partnerships with local organizations, cultural institutions, and community leaders, Dakira ensured that these conversations remained locally grounded while contributing to a broader national dialogue on identity, memory, and coexistence.
Over the course of three years, the Dakira program has played a pivotal role in enhancing the capacities of key community stakeholders, including civil society organizations (CSOs), tourism professionals, ISITT students, and tour guides. Through a series of targeted workshops and training initiatives, the program has focused on equipping participants with the knowledge and skills necessary to preserve and promote Morocco’s diverse cultural and religious heritage, with particular emphasis on Religious and Ethnic Minority (REM) heritage.
Dakira’s youth engagement activities centered on the creation of 90 school clubs, which served as structured spaces for cultural exchange, learning, and dialogue across different regions.
The program engaged 4,437 students across 7 regions through school-based activities, ensuring broad participation across diverse age groups, genders, and cultural backgrounds. This large-scale engagement reinforced the program’s focus on accessibility and inclusive youth participation in cultural learning.
Beyond school clubs, Dakira implemented additional cultural and educational activities, including workshops, artistic initiatives, and a summer camp experience. Field trips served as an essential component of Dakira’s experiential learning approach, enabling students to engage directly with REM cultural heritage. A total of 70 field trips were organized as part of the Dakira program.
Dakira, through its sub-partner FMA, led a set of initiatives focused on preserving and activating the historical and spiritual memory of the Benedictine Monastery of Toumliline in the Fès-Meknès region. These efforts aimed to safeguard the site’s significance while highlighting its role as a space of interfaith encounter and shared heritage within Morocco’s broader historical landscape.
A key component of the project was the identification and interpretation of nearby spiritual and religious sites linked to the three Abrahamic traditions. Interpretive signage was installed across these sites, and a spiritual memorial itinerary was created to connect them into a coherent “Faith Trail” leading to the monastery. This physical and symbolic route helped situate Toumliline within a wider geography of memory and coexistence.
To further strengthen public engagement and accessibility, the initiative developed the “Imane Trail” mobile application, which compiles historical records and contextual information for each site along the itinerary. In parallel, publications documenting the history and meaning of Toumliline were produced, and local guides were trained to transmit this knowledge, ensuring the long-term preservation and active transmission of the site’s cultural and spiritual memory.
Read more about the program's achievements below.
Read more about the program's publications.
In the fall of 2023, the Dakira team traveled through the south of Morocco on a multi-stop heritage caravan — visiting six communities across the Souss-Massa, Haouz, and Guelmim regions. In each location, dialogue events and cultural celebrations were organized by local partners, bringing together men, women, and youth to share testimonials, songs, and stories.
Held in Marrakech in June 2022, the Experience Dakira Conference convened over 160 participants to explore Morocco’s multicultural heritage. Through dialogue, workshops, and site visits, the event fostered exchange across civil society, academia, and the arts, highlighting the role of youth, women, and storytelling in advancing cultural preservation and social cohesion.
In June 2022, Dakira co-organized a cultural exhibition in Rasmouka, Tiznit Province, bringing together around 440 participants, including students, community members, and visiting students from the University of Virginia. Through performances, traditional dances, exhibitions, and student-led demonstrations, the event celebrated Amazigh cultural heritage while highlighting the environmental importance of the Argan tree and promoting community awareness around its conservation.
In August 2023, the DAKIRA program partnered with the Diocese of Tangier to host a 6-day local celebration of International Youth Week, bringing together 94 Christian youth from across Morocco who were unable to attend the global gathering abroad. The initiative reflected Morocco’s longstanding tradition of religious coexistence, offering a space for young participants to practice their faith while engaging with the country’s broader culture of openness and solidarity.
