The face-to-face exchange is without doubt one of the highlights of the exchange program. We gathered in the headquarters of Oxfam in Rabat in Morocco for a three-day learning exchange filled with workshops, testimonies, presentations, reflections, and assignments to come to a concrete plan of action. Together we studied the strengths and challenges of the best practices and modelled them so they would be useful for our mission.

Our first lessons learned are:

• Women need physical spaces to discuss their experiences, build strength and solidarity. By having powerful role models, they can change their mindset to take leadership and advocate for their rights.
• We need to support already existing practices in the protection of female workers and strengthen them by creating synergies across sectors.
• Companies are not the enemies but need to be involved in helping to integrate respect for the work environment of women. Create a win-win strategy with them.
• The media can be mobilized to create visibility and fight stigmatization. This can help people to change their mindset, both the public, as well as cleaning workers and the companies they work at.

Here you'll find the report of the exchange: report YPE

In the non-profit sector we have few opportunities to go out and capitalize on our experiences. It was a moment of pause and an opportunity to present the actions that each one does and to know the perspective of the other on it. The exchange leaves a positive impact on us all.

Rhimou Hajoub, UAF Tanger      

 

I am very happy because I have found people who feel our pain, I never imagined that we would one day study our situation and seek to understand it.

Zhor Mriqa, woman working in the cleaning sector

 

This E-motive approach has a miraculous impact through our impact story in the cleaning sector. Our work has just begun to improve the working conditions in this sector.

E-Motive has brought new life to our work to influence this pilot project through organizations that carry good practices in their daily work and often don't realize it. This approach gave all these people a moment of deep reflection to evaluate the impact of their practices and to engage them to open to others to create new and enriching links between people, help build bridges between different sectors and develop a shared ownership of new actions and strategies.

Hind Nejbah – project lead YPE Oxfam in Morocco