Actions in favour of the fight against illiteracy, school dropouts, and the generalisation of reading, particularly among rural girls, are not lacking in the Al Haouz province. The model of the urban commune of Aït Ourir remains very revealing in this sense. Revealing because this commune recently succeeded in winning one of the prestigious prizes of the African Summit of Local Authorities "Africities 5" held from December 16 to 20 in Marrakech, namely the "Basic Education Award".

Such an international distinction is the fruit of the great efforts deployed, for years, by the various actors concerned (local authorities, elected officials, and civil society) for the promotion of schooling and its generalisation, the fight against school abandonment, and the fight against illiteracy among the local population which remains predominantly rural in the province.

Such efforts have also just been crowned by the signing last weekend at the Aït Ourir municipality of a partnership and cooperation agreement for highlighting the role of reading, its promotion, and its generalisation among the public, including young children.

The signatories of this agreement set themselves the objectives of encouraging students to take more interest in reading and facilitating the local population's access to all the works, books, and unpublished historical documents of the Ben Youssef Library in Marrakech and that of Aït Ourir.

In the opinion of Mohamed Touizi, president of the Aït Ourir municipal council, this agreement is very important insofar as it allows for laying the foundations of an edifying partnership capable of facilitating the training of the staff and personnel of the municipal library of this locality.

Important also, according to Mr. Touizi, because this agreement should facilitate the exchange of visits, experiences, and expertise between the staff of the two libraries and also guarantee the equipment of the Aït Ourir library with instructive works and manuals.

In order to combine the useful with the pleasant and to respond positively to all government programmes in terms of education and training, the Aït Ourir municipality recently initiated a short story reading competition which lasted one month, for the benefit of 6th-year primary education students in various schools of this municipality. This competition was punctuated by an award ceremony and gifts for 10 winners among the young schoolchildren of the region, including 9 girls.

During this cultural and educational event, some 380 short stories by the writer and short story writer, Mohamed Abdessalam El Bakkali, were distributed.

In this context, Mr. Touizi pointed out that the objective of this competition was to stimulate understanding and the sense of analysis among the young participants insofar as they were invited to produce a summary of the short story, to extract the main ideas, and to define the main and secondary characters.

"We initiated this competition with the aim of highlighting the importance of reading and its place of choice in the field of education and training, especially at a time when this practice is beginning to fall into oblivion in the face of the accelerated invasion of various information and communication technologies," explained Mr. Touizi.

He added that it is now up to parents as well as teachers and educators to encourage young children to diversify their reading and take more interest in everything that is instructive, given the importance of this practice, particularly during the first years of schooling, in building the personality of young people, in their cultural and intellectual development, but also in the acquisition of great skills in terms of analysis and reflection. Regarding the "Africities" prize for Basic Education, Mr. Touizi indicated that it is a great distinction that crowns the great work carried out in the field of preschool education and basic education.