Aliza In The Field
Follow here and on Twitter @alizaapp.
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Our first site visit in France was at Rêves (means “dreams”), the French version of Make A Wish Foundation, at their offices just outside Lyon. We met with two staff members, Aurélie and Virginie, who showed us photos from many of the dreams that have been realized. Like in the US, the most common request is Disney (though of course here it’s Euro Disney in France). Some of the other interesting requests are to meet celebrities (Eva Longoria, Robert Pattinson), or are related to animals, like feeding a baby tiger or swimming with seals or dolphins. Rêves grants wishes to children and teens up to the age of 18, but they work with other groups and are able to refer the cases they can’t take.
Their project on our site is to help a teenage girl with a terminal illness meet a famous horse trainer, and it has already been fully funded. We are always glad to see a successful project, and we can’t wait to see what they’re going to post next!
Read more about this GlobalGiving project here (but no more donating, since it has been fully funded!): http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/meet-frederick-pignon-equine-handler/
Aliza is in Morocco, Spain and France as a part of GlobalGiving’s In The Field program. Follow along at alizainthefield.tumblr.com or on Twitter @alizaapp.
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As opposed to many of the other organizations on the site, our sole Barcelona project is led by a single entrepreneur, Aseel Honein, who came to GlobalGiving through a World Bank initiative. Her project is to empower homeless people by looking to develop long-term solutions to the problems that cause homelessness. In other words, instead of providing temporary shelter for homeless people, Aseel’s project would like to address the causes of the homelessness.
Aseel organizes and hosts brainstorming workshops, and also plans awareness campaigns. During our meeting, Aseel (above), whose full-time job is as a professor of architecture and design in Lebanon, showed us some of her results. In one video, some of her Lebanese students came to spend a week in Barcelona, where they put together a demonstration with a light up swing in a park where children play during the day but homeless people sleep at night. We also saw some ideas from the workshops, including one in which beach umbrellas could have pull-down shades to turn into shacks, and another where these small shops that sell food or magazines along Las Ramblas could have small beds built into the back. As neither Shonali nor myself are art and design people, it was interesting to see these solutions pitched from an architecture and spacial perspective instead of a political one. We look forward to more innovative ideas from this project!
Read more about and donate to this GlobalGiving project here: http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/barcelona-social-inclusion-empower-2500-homeless/
Aliza is in Morocco, Spain and France as a part of GlobalGiving’s In The Field program. Follow along at alizainthefield.tumblr.com or on Twitter @alizaapp.
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It was so great to be back in Madrid! Shonali had already been before, but she missed a bunch of the tourist-y stuff on her first go-round (the Reina Sofia and Palacio Real, for example), so we had a fun day or two of hitting all the main sites. We had some ice cream in the Retiro, did the Palacio Real tour on the day when all EU citizens go free (sad day for us), and of course, had lots and lots of sangria and tapas.
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It’s been a while since I updated, but Europe has been a very different experience than Morocco, and we have been keeping very busy indeed! Last week in Madrid, Shonali started out by visiting a project of Fundación Juan XXIII, our partner through the GG satellite office in London, GlobalGiving UK.
Fundación Juan provides job and IT training to mentally disabled adults in Madrid. Spain does not have the vast social worker system that the US does, so these individuals are often left to be cared for by their families with very little instruction or assistance after they finish the school system at 18. At the FJ center in Madrid, they get job training, grooming and hygiene classes (so they can prepare to live alone), access to gym and arts facilities, and training in a variety of computer and IT skills so they can enter the job market. They also get job training to work in the hospitality industry (restaurants, hotels, etc.), and there is even a cafe on the premises for them to practice - which we visited with Laura, the lovely project leader.
Read more about and donate to this GlobalGiving project here: http://www.globalgiving.co.uk/projects/it-space-for-learning-disabled-people-in-madrid/
Aliza is in Morocco, Spain and France as a part of GlobalGiving’s In The Field program. Follow along at alizainthefield.tumblr.com or on Twitter @alizaapp.
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Hola from Madrid!
Shonali and I had a fairly epic roadtrip journey from Chefchaouen to Madrid, so much so that we are actually both still a little amazed that it all worked out. The ferries leave from Tanger to Spain, so we knew we had to get to Tanger. At first we had been planning on a day in Asilah, but Chefchaouen was so beautiful and perfect that we stayed there an extra day instead.
Basically, there are two kinds of taxis in Morocco. Petit taxis only hold three passengers, usually have working meters (!!) and go anywhere in that given city. Grand taxis hold six passengers (they are regular sedans but just squeeze people in: two in the front, four in the back, no seatbelts, no personal space, no mercy) and go between towns and villages. So Shonali and I first took one grand taxi from Chefchaouen to Tetouan (one hour, 30 dirham aka about 3 dollars), for which we were seated in the back. We arrived in Tetouan and hopped in another grand taxi to Tanger (one hour, 25 dirham), for which we were squished in the front two seats. At first this seemed a bit uncomfortable, but when one of the women in back started vomiting, it suddenly became the best plan ever. We got out in Tanger and took a local petit taxi to the port.
The ferry was the “EUROPE” moment for us both: suddenly, all the prices were in euros, people were uncovered and drinking beer (in the middle of the day, during Ramadan), and the whole thing was air conditioned and efficient (we left EARLY…who does that??). Our ferry let us out in Tarifa, where we hopped a free shuttle bus to Algeciras, and then got tickets for the 8.5-hour bus ride to Madrid. Although we were clearly back in Europe, this particular bus was clearly a Moroccan affair. Most of the people around us were speaking Arabic again, and when the fast ended an imam came down the aisle to pass out dates.
We are now safely at our hostel in Madrid, and are looking forward to a great dinner of tapas and sangria. Our first site visit here is tomorrow!
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The doors of the medina of Chefchaouen. Let’s face it, at this point I could have a separate blog just for door photos. Which, maybe I will.
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Also, this is my new friend, an adorable baby goat, who we met at the hilltop Spanish Mosque. He was tiny and ate leaves out of our hands!
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Chefchaouen is maybe the most beautiful place in Morocco, if not one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, ever. The town is mostly medina (old city), everything painted blue and white and set against the Rif Mountains. It is cleaner and nicer than (though admittedly less expansive as) the Fes medina, and also marks the place where people started speaking to us in Spanish. This was my favorite back when I visited as a study abroad student in college, and after a MUCH longer stay this time…it might still be.
There was not that much to see here, but Shonali and I very much enjoyed the chill and relaxed nature of the town, the lovely kasbah in the center plaza, and most especially the beautiful view from our excellent hostel, Riad Baraka. We also did a short hike up to the Spanish Mosque, though it was not as short as promised (“my mum does it in her slippers with the dogs,” is what we were told by Joe, who runs the hostel); still, it had a view that was worth the trek. Though had we known, we might have worn better shoes, as usual.
