{"id":25172,"date":"2018-12-11T21:23:39","date_gmt":"2018-12-11T21:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=25172"},"modified":"2018-12-11T21:23:39","modified_gmt":"2018-12-11T21:23:39","slug":"the-kindergarten-giving-hope-to-refugees-in-morocco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=25172","title":{"rendered":"The kindergarten giving hope to refugees in Morocco"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kenitra, Morocco<\/strong>\u00a0– A kindergarten called “Hope” operates in the middle of a residential neighbourhood 50km from Morocco’s capital Rabat.<\/p>\n

The name aptly describes the activities taking place inside the brightly coloured building in Kenitra. It is Morocco’s first refugee cooperative, run by a group of Yemenis who came to the country to study but could not go back because of the war in Yemen.<\/p>\n

Morocco is home to about 7,500 refugees and asylum seekers from more than 50 countries. Syrians form the bulk of that group – more than 3,000 – but there are also about 700 Yemenis who have fled the three-year-old war.<\/p>\n

Among them is Abdullah, who arrived in Morocco almost three years ago.<\/p>\n

“The idea to open a school came during a brainstorming session between me and some other Yemeni PhD students here,” said Abdullah, who worked in the education sector in Yemen for a decade before leaving the country in order to follow his studies.<\/p>\n

A high percentage of refugees and migrants, especially from sub-Saharan Africa who arrive in Morocco, want to carry on the journey and reach Europe.<\/p>\n

In 2013, Morocco launched a migrant regularisation programme through which it has granted residency permits to more than 50,000 people<\/a>\u00a0in a move designed to change its image from that of a transit country to a host nation.<\/p>\n

It also aimed to provide funding and assistance to those who want to launch their own projects.<\/p>\n

“In 2015, Morocco was a transit country then it became progressively a destination country for part of the refugees,”\u00a0said Bettina Gambert, the UN refugee agenyc’s deputy representative in Morocco.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“Since then, the refugees have started staying here longer. If they are registered and assisted here, they will stay.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kenitra, Morocco\u00a0– A kindergarten called “Hope” operates in the middle of a residential neighbourhood 50km from Morocco’s capital Rabat. The name aptly describes the activities taking place inside the brightly coloured building in Kenitra. It is Morocco’s first refugee cooperative, run by a group of Yemenis who came to the country to study but could…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":25173,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}