Editor’s note: All opinions expressed in this article belong to their respective author(s). Check our section “Voices” dedicated to opinion pieces on AUI Chronicle. This piece has been co-authored with Karim Bahoum.
The Middle Atlas region has long attracted hikers, climbers, and campers for its mountainous and rocky landscapes. Its plains, though wide and deserted, leave little room for agriculture because of the area’s geographical disposition and notorious drought. The people who live there are scattered mostly in small villages or rural cities, with few exceptions such as Fez and Meknes where the youth who can afford to do so go to study, hoping to one day find a job to support their families. Additionally, the vast majority of the population are Amazigh, إمازيغن, who rely solely on field labor, basic farming, and transportation to sustain their modest lifestyle.
Investing socially in the Middle Atlas
Several initiatives have been introduced in the Atlas region both by the state and civil society, most of whom have been poorly sponsored and rely solely on volunteer work and corporate social responsibility funds or even mere donations. Ifrane, probably the only rural city which has been privileged enough to get ‘urbanized’ and turned into a ‘touristic village’, as well as its neighboring city Azrou, knew several projects of the sort, especially upon the establishment of AUI. The most influential ones would be ADMA – Association pour le Développement du Moyen-Atlas- (to which Hand In Hand is affiliated) and the ACCD –Azrou Center for Community Development-, with the latter being interconnected and linked to AUI, enjoying more independence with a broader circle of direct influence. The two organizations invest large sums of money in supporting dozens of thousands of people, mainly women, and young men, in building their knowledge and expertise in different domains, ranging from embroidery to software engineering.
Still, they do not tackle the region’s core issues. Although it is probably not listed explicitly as such in any record, AUI has long been Ifrani people’s main source of income. Other than a couple of overbearing water extraction companies, there are no businesses near Ifrane or Azrou, there are no conglomerates in the region, and definitely no business centers. AUI enjoys an almost complete influence over Ifrane, so why isn’t it investing in the wellbeing of its citizens as much as it could?
AUI being an important pillar in the Middle Atlas
Thanks to its special status, AUI has long benefitted from state and regional privileges. Meanwhile, if we take a look at Timeddiqine or the Pam, two large, isolated quarters where most Ifranis live, one would easily notice the disparity between the quality of their infrastructures compared to those in the Centre and Marché, where AUIers and tourists mostly hang out.
Therefore, I believe our administration has the power and the right connections to provoke or at least incite a change in the way things work in Ifrane and to impact the socio-economic environment of the Middle Atlas. To illustrate, the Leadership Development Program (LDI) taught me the importance of self-awareness and the impact of our privilege. Being an Amazigh woman in Morocco taught me that whoever possesses the power to make a change and refuses to do so is rendered an accomplice in the oppression.
The Middle Atlas, in general, deserves more than to be a social experimentation area or volunteering program destination for others. AUI’s core mission is to build our country’s future leaders while both staff and faculty try their best to provide us with quality services and education. Thanks to that, many of us are grateful for the memories and experiences we lived in AUI, making it exactly why we want to see it grow and use its full potential, not only for our sake as students but for every single person who was lucky enough to work in it and who invested body and soul for our comfort.
One could say that AUI already has what it takes to act on the values it promotes. A case in point, the efforts deployed by the administration to support Ifrani families during the early stages of the coronavirus crisis prove that no matter what, Ifrane and AUI are but one community. In this case, their pain should be ours too and their struggle is not only symbolic but an indicator to the extent to which AUI is detached from its environment. We need to move past the bubble of safety and preservation we are so used to on-campus and try to connect more with those we tend to only see as service-providers at our disposal.
To put it simply, just because something is not a problem for us at first hand, it does not make us exempt of any responsibility towards it. Despite the scarcity of its resources and the alienation of its people, the Middle Atlas has long remained a safe haven for us, and now is not the time to question what we refuse to see, but to look at it straight in the eye and think: “What can we do with what we have to put an end to it?”.
“When we identify where our privilege intersects with somebody else’s oppression, we’ll find our opportunities to make real change.”
Ijeoma Oluo
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