A group of eight Lower-sixth girls headed to Morocco this week to support the School’s four-year partnership with a charity that helps Moroccan girls to go to school.

 

The girls are spending a week trekking and visiting the rural villages in the Moroccan Atlas where traditionally, because of the distances to travel to secondary school, most girls finish their learning at the age of eleven.

 

Now, more than fifty girls have the chance to enjoy secondary education, living in boarding houses that have been funded, and in part built, by students from Bristol Grammar School.

 

Andrew Dimberline, Head of Leadership Development at Bristol Grammar School has been closely involved with the project since the School first made a link with the charity behind it, Education for All, in 2007. Since then, four successive groups of students, fifty in total, have raised more than £20,000 to support the project in the last four years. They helped dig the foundations for the first boarding house in April 2007 and their fundraising paid for the conversion of a second boarding house. A third boarding house is already under construction.
 

Says Dr Dimberline, “It is fantastic to see just how much the girls are enjoying and benefiting from their education. In an area where 80% of women are illiterate, a girl who is educated is very likely to educate her own children. As well as making a difference to a few lives, indirectly, this project may help many more.”

 

The eight students visiting this week all had to raise a minimum of £200 per person to support the project. A further twelve students are planning a similar fundraising and support trip next Easter.

 

Bristol Grammar School has a whole House group of 130 students who also directly support the project. Students in Morocco are included in the School’s House system and two Moroccan students are awarded achievement and progress prizes every year as part of the School’s annual prize-giving.