Douze de nos jeunes du programme MOMKIN 20 se sont déplacé à Rabat ce lundi 28 et mardi 29 octobre 2019 pour travailler avec un groupe d’étudiants américains du programme SIT Study Abroad.
Après avoir eu connaissance des étapes à suivre pour leurs recherches, les jeunes ont été répartis en binômes maroco-américains, puis ont été invités à choisir et pitcher le sujet de leur article devant les journalistes Aida Alami et Daniel Bernard.
Une fois les sujets validés, les binômes se lanceront sur le terrain pour mener leurs enquêtes.
Voici ce qu’a écrit Hajar sur son voyage :
Another trip to a big city, Rabat. I packed my suitcase, prepared my dinner and left for the bus station. I met my colleagues there. Well, we had to wait a bit for Youssef and Maroine. When they finally arrived we had some nice time at the café waiting for our bus. I had a video call with mom to assure her that everything is going smoothly as planned. The bus arrived around 11:15 pm and we left the Bus station at around midnight time. I cannot believe how this line of buses is as comfy as CTM. I decided to sit next to Imane El kouzoudi because we get along very well. We had some very deep conversations, shared our insights, talked about Art, discussed a bit of philosophy and concluded by listening to some good late night Jazz music; for that i thank her for providing spotify all the way there. Our sleep was fragmented which made us a bit tired so we could not wait to get to Rabat. Something that caught my eyes during the ride was the flashy red clock exactly in front of me. It is not adjusted, it was set on 20:15 and shining in a strong red color. It annoyed me all the way but I managed to get some sleep. We arrived at around 07.30 am and had breakfast right away because some of us were already starving. After food, we took taxis to the Old Medina where we checked in at this modest clean guest house. We freshened up, changed real quick and headed to the CCCL.
We arrived there at 10: 18 and we were welcomed warmly by the SIT students, Mr daniel, the founders of the CCCL and all the staff. The founder of the CCCL initiated the meeting and gave us an idea on what is SIT. After that Daniel gave us a whole presentation on how is the research supposed to be and the division of tasks. He provided us with more details about the logistics, funding, partnership and finally what tasks are we, as Connect institute Students, supposed to help with. He also answered all of our questions and clarified all the unclear points.
After that, we had 30 minutes for each group to discuss their idea and elaborate on it more. I and my partner, Ellie Zimmerman invested that time to finally pinpoint the topic we are going to work on which interested us both. Our topic is Jewish Alliance schools in Casablanca and the question of why there is a majority of 80% Muslim students attending them. I raised a number of questions that appealed to my partner and agreed on the outline of our article. We made a couple of calls to try to get a meeting to interview the director of one of the schools. The first two calls went in vain but the third one was luckily successful. I called the director of one of the Jewish schools, explained the project, the partnership and the reasons why we are doing this and she was very responsive and helping. Tomorrow, she will hopefully call us back to confirm. We had lunch together and discussed more our projects. Later, we presented our proposition in front of the jury (Mr Daniel, Mme Aida and Mr Mosaab). We convinced them with how our idea is coherent and interesting to undertake research on. They recommended some people, gave us some advice and most importantly they approved it. They were all positive about our idea and just discussed some little details in order to clarify our methodology and pathway.
At the end of the day, Ellie and N’kaela invited me and Imane El Kouzoudi to go to Renaissance café to watch a live music performance and have a drink together. We met there at around 9 pm. I believe we deserved some leisure time since we worked hard and did a good job today. It was so much fun. I am looking forwards to the upcoming day.
