{"id":22744,"date":"2022-03-24T08:00:16","date_gmt":"2022-03-24T08:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highatlasfoundation.org\/?p=22744"},"modified":"2022-03-24T14:38:06","modified_gmt":"2022-03-24T14:38:06","slug":"my-fes-gate-2022-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress-haf.ddev.site\/my-fes-gate-2022-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"My Fes Gate 2022 Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Yossef Ben-Meir<\/span><\/i> <\/p>\n I am approaching my 30th year of being involved in Morocco\u2019s sustainable development <\/span>journey<\/span><\/a>. As in all paths of life, there are surprises that arise in the roles we play and remarkable experiences that can come any day.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Receiving the Fes-Gate Trophy with <\/span>14 wonderful others<\/span><\/a> this past week was one of these experiences and a recognition of the women\u2019s and girls\u2019 empowerment work the High Atlas Foundation has been dedicated to since its beginning in 2000, but even more vitally over the past years as facilitators of the Imagine empowerment methodology.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Organizations such as HAF are born from the concept that people\u2019s participation in their own development is the primary determinant of sustainability. However, with time and experience, we have learned there is more.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n How can we truly participate when within ourselves we are not free, are too much in doubt of our ability, uncertain as to the future we most want or how to achieve it, and faced with oftentimes extraordinary external <\/span>social<\/span><\/a> controls limiting our movements and access to opportunities and justice?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Participation <\/span>is<\/span><\/i> absolutely vital but most especially when we are confident, when our vision for ourselves and our communities has been built, when we have identified and are addressing the constraints within and outside of us, and when we can imagine and move toward a new reality of our own prosperity, fully intertwined with our communities, our country, and even our world.<\/span><\/p>\n We have also come to understand that an ingredient of <\/span>empowermen<\/span><\/a>t is identity discovery, of learning about our historic selves in relation to each other as they emerge through time to the contemporary in our localities, countries, and regions.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Our equation for sustainability has grown to become \u201cEmpowerment plus Participation equals Sustainability\u201d\u2014the sustainability of our lives and new possibilities of what we can create within them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nHAF President\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n