Invitation to Morocco!

WE ARE GOING TO MOROCCO! We will depart March 19th, 2012 and will return to the US in late May 2014.  Both of us are going to be working in Youth Development.  We will have to learn Arabic which is the main language spoken in Morocco. Here is some info from our handbook:


History of the Peace Corps in Morocco 
Morocco was among the first countries to invite the Peace Corps to assist in its development process. A group of 53 surveyors, English teachers, and irrigation supervisors arrived in Morocco in 1963 at the invitation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Since then, over 4,000 Volunteers have served in the Kingdom of Morocco in areas such as lab technology, urban development, home economics, commercial development, education of the blind and deaf, rural water supply, vocational education, maternal child health, natural resources management, youth development, marine and inland fisheries, small business development, sports, beekeeping, architecture, and English language training.


In 1995, education Volunteers began teaching English in community youth centers (dar chebab), enabling youth to practice the English they learned in school. While content-based English teaching is still widely used, the program today focuses on youth leadership, strengthening youth networks, capacity-building of professionals who work with youth, and promotion of girls’ education.  Volunteers work with local professionals and youth to promote volunteerism and youth leadership through
activities such as sports, study of world geography, libraries, exercise classes, environmental projects, project management training, thematic English teaching, and self-esteem activities for girls.

Learn about the Peace Corps in Morocco HERE!

Invitation Process

We had another interview last week; this interview was like our "invitation interview." It was mostly a check-in to see how we are feeling and what we are thinking.  They wanted to know what challenges we thought we might face as individuals and as a couple.  Following the conversation we were told that we were officially qualified for an invitation! That is good to know!

A few ideas we have based on the conversation:

What will we be doing? It sounds like Arie may be doing community development, and Kate may be doing youth development and teaching English. 

Where might we go? Eastern Europe was mentioned - does this mean that we will serve there?  Who knows, but it is a region where A LOT of Peace Corps Volunteers serve.  Check out the Interactive Map of Peace Corps countries; it is really fun to play with. You can see what countries we might enf up in.  Eastern Europe is not just the former western USSR countries (which is what I have always thought) but also more southern countries closer to the Middle East.  We were told that Central and South America would be "last resort" places for us.  They would look for open positions there if they could not find us anything else for us in the world.  This is because there are so many American's with really strong Spanish skills, and Kate in particular has minimal Spanish.  Arie has college level Spanish, but there are many people who are fluent - they go to this region first. 

We were told we would hear something from them in August, but we are not sure what.  We will keep you all updated! Thanks for reading!