Everything we run

Erasmus+

Youth exchanges & training courses

Erasmus+ youth exchanges bring together groups of young people from several countries for a week or two of workshops, discussion and shared living. The European Union covers travel, food and accommodation; participants pay little or nothing.

We take part both as a sending organisation — selecting young people from Larache and preparing them to travel — and as a partner in projects designed with organisations elsewhere.

How to be selected

European Solidarity Corps

Long-term volunteering, in and out of Morocco

We hold a European Solidarity Corps Quality Label for Hosting and Supporting, valid to 31 December 2027. That means we can host volunteers from Europe here in Larache, and support young Moroccans going on placements abroad.

Placements run from a couple of months to a full year. Travel, accommodation, insurance, a language course and a monthly allowance are covered by the programme — volunteers are not asked to pay to take part.

More than 40 volunteers have come through us so far. Ayman Habib is one of them: eleven months in Örebro, Sweden, working on technology and AI for the future.

Volunteering in detail

Discovery Workshop

A season of practical episodes

Discovery Workshop runs as a series of self-contained sessions, each one a different skill or door. Episode one introduced Erasmus+ and the European Solidarity Corps and how young Moroccans can reach them. Episode two covered graphic design fundamentals in Adobe Illustrator. Episode three, led by Abdelhamid Zoubair and Oumaima, worked through eco-friendly lifehacks. Later sessions moved into the studio, with painting and hands-on art.

Participants who complete a season receive a certificate — useful when applying for exchanges and placements later.

Shumis Cinema Festival of Larache

The city’s own film festival

Shumis is our film festival — screenings, encounters with directors and workshops, staged across the city rather than shut inside one venue. The first edition ran from 22 to 26 August 2023.

It exists because young people in Larache who want to work in film have almost nowhere to see films made by people like them, or to meet the people who made them.

Ach Banlek ?!

Public debate, in the open

“Ach Banlek ?!” — what do you think? — is a debate series where young people take a difficult question and argue it in public, in Darija, without a script. The first three episodes were The Right to be Different (25 April 2021), Being a Woman in Morocco (6 June 2021) and a special edition on youth and politics staged on election day (4 July 2021).

It has kept running since, with sessions hosted in cafés, cultural centres and courtyards around Larache.

Tlila

The podcast

Tlila is our conversation series with people making a life out of something difficult in northern Morocco. Longer and slower than an interview, it is meant for young people who want to know how a path like that actually gets built here — from someone who built one.

• Episode 1 — Hamza El Hachaam, African taekwondo champion
• Episode 2 — Mohamed Chakhat, skateboarder
• Episode 3 — Mohamed Cherif Tribak, film director

Latest episodes on Instagram

Clubs & open mics

English Club, Philo Club, OpenMicultura

The regular, unglamorous part of the work — and the part that changes the most people. English Club is conversation practice for young people who will need English for study, work or an exchange. Philo Club, which held its first session at La Puerta del Kasbah on 25 September 2021, is for anyone who enjoys a long argument about how to live. OpenMicultura gives the stage to whoever wants it: poetry, music, stand-up, whatever turns up.

Ask when the next one is