Spent the whole day with Yhtimad who really runs this foundation day to day. While the foundation aims to rehabilitate the medina, they quickly realized that none of the citizens will fix their houses up if they have no money for basic necessities. So their primary focus is to empower and educate the community, mostly women, to be employable and economically sustainable. They run daily classes for women in Arabic, French, sowing and embroidery. baking and cooking. I bought some of the crochet jewellery for Mia and mum and they were so grateful (idea for a notepad, start selling this stuff right there to all the tourists !)

The foundation running the programs is rather immature and needs help. They need a real organizational and business design, fundraising strategy, communications and operations plans on how to scale what they do well and grow the impact. And that’s our job to put together ! Later, we were invited to the home of our client, Mr. Adil and his wife Yhtimad – and discussed the project with Adil, as he has been recovering from back surgery. They have two beautiful girls who were super well behaved – and it was so lovely to see real Moroccan home with the great couches, mint tea and of course, Moroccan cookies. (I really started missing Mia though as their little Nasreen walked around with her big curly hair). We spent full 2.5 hours with them and actually walked home alone through the city – we didn’t know where we were most of the time but made it through the magical mazes of the old medina. #ibmcsc