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Toolkit gives Moroccan youth the lead in tackling dropout
By Jillian Slutzker
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A new, practical toolkit to use the innovative Youth Speak methodology—a youth-led process of investigating school dropout and mobilizing community action to address it—has been released.
With the support and leadership of Morocco’s Ministry of Education’s Directorate of Non-formal Education, the toolkit will be implemented by Youth Speak teams in 40 middle schools nationwide this year. It will empower the next wave of middle school students to be the instigators and agents of positive change to reduce school dropout and improve conditions for students in their communities.
“After a preliminary assessment and consideration of the success in achieving the objectives of the Youth Speak program, the Directorate of Non-Formal Education plans to introduce this operation as part its new strategic vision to fight against dropouts,” says El Hassane Mahfoudi, Team Leader of the Anti-Dropout Unit at the Directorate of Non-formal Education.
Mahfoudi says the Directorate plans to implement Youth Speak in as many as 60 additional schools in 2016 and 100 more schools the following year.
Up to 400,000 Moroccan students drop out of school each year, and the dropout rate for students in 7th to 9th grade is nearly 11 out of every 100, the Ministry of Education reports.
For a problem centered on the lives of young people and challenges they encounter in pursuing education, previous approaches to the issue have involved surprisingly low levels of youth input and leadership.
“Youth Speak is a project for youth, with youth and by youth,” explains Youssra Bailoul, a Youth Speak leader and student from Tetouan who participated in the program’s original rollout in 2013.
Through the Youth Speak process, youth leaders, both those in school and out-of-school, investigate the factors contributing to students dropping out of the schools in their communities and design solutions based on their findings.
“The goal is for youth to do all the work, not adults. In the past, adults did most of this research. There was not communication between the students and the people who were responsible for the research,” Bailoul says.
Youth Speak was pioneered by Creative Associates International, with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development in six Moroccan middle schools in 2013 as part of the Improving Training for Quality Advancement in National Education project. At the conclusion of the program, all participating out-of-school youth had returned to the classroom.
The rollout of the Youth Speak Morocco Toolkit follows successful outcomes in a usability test of the toolkit with youth leaders and their coaches in three pilot schools in the Rabat-Salé region, representing urban, peri-urban and rural zones.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
Jumpstarting inquiry and action
The Youth Speak process hinges on youth leadership and cannot succeed without it, explains, Eric Rusten, Ph.D., youth development and education expert at Creative and co-author of the toolkit with El Mostafa Echchotbi, a Moroccan specialist on youth and learning facilitation.
“[Youth] are the ones that will drive this forward. They are the ones that will be most affected by the results. No one else will be more interested in their future,” says Rusten.
Four of the six pilot communities that took part in Youth Speak in 2013 prepared proposals, using their research reports, to request grants from a government program.
Through their investigations, the youth researchers had discovered that a lack of safe, affordable transportation to school was preventing students from attending. Their proposals were approved, and each of these communities received funding to buy two school busses.
By using an inquiry-based approach where thoughtful responses rather than “right” answers are encouraged, adult coaches of Youth Speak teams lay the groundwork for a youth-guided process of questioning and problem-solving around the dropout issue.
“We were all timid at the beginning,” explains one alumni of the Youth Speak program. “But the facilitators and our coaches encouraged us to speak up, make decisions, lead activities and present our results….By the end of the workshop we were different young people from who we were at the start.”
In fact, the outcomes of Youth Speak have even surpassed the expectations of its creators, according to Echchotbi.
“This initiative has continued to surprise everyone, including the organizers, the coordinators, the ministry officials, the funders, schools staff and youth leaders,” he says, reflecting on the original Youth Speak groups’ successes. “Day after day, meeting after meeting, the youth leaders gained skills and demonstrated capabilities which were unsuspected.”
Echchotbi explains that the day youth leaders presented their research findings on the factors leading to school dropouts and their perspectives on solutions, government and school officials were stunned.
“At this moment, everybody believed that these young girls and boys were capable of doing miraculous things,” he says.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
Seven-steps to true youth leadership
The toolkit, which will be distributed in Arabic and is tailored to the Moroccan context, guides schools, coaches and youth leaders through a seven-step process from creating a Youth Speak team to carrying out research, designing a dropout prevention plan, and ultimately monitoring and sustaining efforts to stem future attrition.
It also includes sample implementation plans and workshops exercises in a digital annex.
With the toolkit in their hands, youth will be in the “driver’s seat,” Rusten says, with the skills to navigate a number of difficult roads they may encounter. They will become community role models, much like Youth Speak leader and alumni Youssef Bidar from the town of Youssoufia.
“As a Youth Leader I realized that I had an important role to play in my school and community,” says Bidar.
“As news about Youth Speak spread, other students would come and ask me and my fellow Youth Leaders to talk to students who were thinking about dropping out or who had already dropped out and were wondering how to return to school.”
Youssef says parents, teachers and school administrators also sought out his insights and those of his fellow leaders on best practices to counter dropout.
While the Youth Speak approach has been used so far to fight dropouts it can be deployed by youth to address a variety of challenges. The toolkit helps youth develop into master “chefs,” Rusten explains, cooking up solutions to the dropout problem, or other issues affecting their group of peers.
“What’s the difference between someone who has to cook with a cookbook and a chef in a restaurant?” Rusten asked youth leaders and coaches at the start of the usability testing workshop. “A toolkit is not designed to be a recipe in a cookbook. We want you to become chefs, not cooks.”
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A lasting transformation
When youth are the ones driving change, the balance of power changes between adults and young people and a new collaborative, respect-based relationship replaces a hierarchical one.
This transformation of relationships between adults and youth is one of the most powerful changes the Youth Speak approach spurs, says Rusten.
Throughout his long career working with youth in educational settings, Echchotbi explains that prior to becoming a Youth Speak coordinator he favored conventional teaching methods and did not delegate authority to his students.
As a Youth Speak coordinator, Echchotbi says the guiding principle was “keeping youth at the center of all our work, to authentically care about them and to trust in their capacities to do things well and to innovate….Over time I saw young people quickly gain new skills and develop a strong sense of confidence in their abilities.”
“I have come to realize that Youth Speak needs to be a part of every Moroccan student’s education,” Echchotbi says.
With toolkits arriving this month in the mailboxes of the 40 schools launching Youth Speak initiatives this year, Morocco is well on its way to putting youth at the forefront of stemming the country’s substantial dropout problem.
“We all realize that we need take action to prevent dropouts,” says Bidar.
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