The time was for celebration, this Saturday, at the Shems'y Sidi Moumen Centre under the Moroccan Association for Aid to Children in Precarious Situations (AMESIP), located at the Oum Kaltoum Complex in Sidi Moumen. A dozen children were celebrating their birthday against a backdrop of music and various entertainment, with a clown and a magician on the program. "At the Shems'y Centre, we take care of children who hang around in the streets or live in a situation of precariousness and poverty and whose parents are separated. Our work is to recover them, to ensure they have a school catch-up, and to put them back into state schools," indicates Malika Sahimi, director of the Shems'y Sidi Moumen Centre. Today, some 170 children, aged 4 to 18, are taken care of by this centre. Some of them are in preschool (4/5 years old) while others follow non-formal education courses. Some children who have already reintegrated into state schools return every Saturday, a day of celebration at the centre, to contribute to the entertainment. "The latter consider themselves at home, hence this relationship which is part of continuity," assures Malika Sahimi. In this sense, the centre organizes a weekly party every Saturday. Similarly, the centre's managers celebrate, on the last Saturday of each month, the collective birthday of all children born in the past month. For some children who cannot reintegrate into normal schooling, they are de facto placed in training and apprenticeship centres for certain trades. "This is the case for several children who could not follow the school curriculum in state schools. Even at our centre, they had a lot of difficulty following the courses provided," emphasizes Malika Sahimi. In short, these are children who are out of school. Consequently, to guarantee a future for this category of children, the Chems'y Centre has opted for a new system. Indeed, these children follow, during the mornings, basic courses essential to help them face active life. They are taught to read and write and to do calculations. As for the afternoons, they are dedicated to vocational training. The children learn trades at the Oum Kaltoum Complex itself. "These children do not have the required level of the 6th year of school to follow vocational training, and therefore cannot depend on the OFPPT (Office of Vocational Training and Employment Promotion) or the National Mutual Aid. For this reason, we have created training centres within the complex. Currently, two types of training are provided there, the first in electricity and the second in jewellery, in addition to the circus school created by our association," specifies Malika Sahimi. Since 2007, the date of the centre's creation, more than 300 children have passed through there. Even for children already reintegrated, it is considered at the centre that the task is not yet finished, since these children benefit from permanent monitoring by the association.

During the period that preceded the year 1996, the founding members of AMESIP had noted the ever-increasing number of children roaming the streets of Rabat, at a time when their peers were in class, engaging in multiple parallel activities on the sly. Many of them had started to indulge in various forms of drug addiction: inhalation of hallucinogenic products, consumption of psychotropics, etc. Most of them lack hygiene and are often sick. An investigation to determine their geographical origin was conducted. All had left school prematurely or had never attended it. From the foundation of AMESIP, an investigation was conducted whose results indicated the path to follow to act effectively against the phenomenon of children in precarious situations.