SUPER GIRLS SOAR AT PROJECT SOAR

“No one is more vulnerable than adolescent girls living in poverty in the developing world,” says Montague. “These girls are at risk of dropping out of school, becoming girl brides, girl mothers, and then starting the whole cycle again. So empowering girls is the investment that can change a whole future generation. That is why my husband and I founded Project Soar.”

Montague was born in Cairo, Egypt, to parents who both loved to travel and give back to the people they met along the way. Both her mother and father were ardent feminists. She carried on with all of these passions in her own life. Prior to founding Project Soar, Montague worked for  20 years in international humanitarian aid in Africa and Asia. She originally came to Morocco to run a prisoners’ rights program for an international nonprofit organization and she fell in love with the country and its people.

Montague and her husband, architect Chris Redecke, settled just outside Marrakech, where they built their resort hotel and shop and started a family of their own, with two daughters. As they came to learn about the challenges local girls, where many teenage girls drop out of school around puberty to marry and start families. Montague was compelled to take action.

“No country can get ahead if it leaves 50% of its population behind. The future must be powered by strong women,” says Montague.

Project Soar helps girls first my getting their pledge to stay in school, through high school. Then it supports the girls through academic programs, empowerment coaching, health education, sports, and arts classes. All services are free, funded by profits from the hotel and shop, as well as through the US government, partner foundations and private donations.

This academic support has increased the passing rate for girls in Project Soar to 73 percent compared with the average passing rate of 44 percent for ninth grade girls in the Marrakech region, according to the American Embassy in Morocco.

In addition to expanding knowledge and skills, Project Soar’s programs help to build the girls’ self confidence and self esteem.

Project Soar aims to inspire girls to believe in their own value -- to recognize their own inner strength, intelligence, and abilities. After school coaching and classes, in topics such as public speaking, goal setting, problem solving, and social entrepreneurship help empower girls and encourage each girl’s development.

A Project Soar Girl Knows:

• Her Value. She is confident, has high self-esteem, and respects her own worth and potential.

• Knows her Voice. She communicates her thoughts clearly, resolves conflict effectively and advocates for herself productively.

• Her Body. She understands changes in her body and values her own health and wellness.

• Her Rights. She embraces her right to an education and understands her right to be free from exploitation, violence and forced marriage.

• Her Path. She has tools to envision her future, sets goals assertively and conducts action planning with ease.

In rural communities, where there are few schools and attendance is minimal, most families don’t have the educational background to support girls in school, which impedes their ability to excel and increases their chances of becoming dropouts and child brides. Project Soar provides after-school homework support and tutoring. And, as there is no space in their families’ tiny homes for the girls to do homework, read, talk with friends or explore hobbies, Project Soar offers a safe and supportive environment for adolescent girls to gather, with a  library of books, in Arabic and English, as well as Kindle readers iPads.

In Moroccan villages, most girls grow up only speaking a Moroccan Arabic dialect, known as Darija, which limits their ability to communicate with anyone outside of their tiny communities. Project Soar offers weekly standard Arabic, French and English classes to increase their chances for future employment.

Project Soar’s programs have the whole girl in mind, beyond academics. For example, while art is not offered at the majority of Moroccan public schools, at Project Soar, art helps inspire creativity and vision.  Project Soar art sessions are rooted in themes of social justice, empowerment and self-awareness. The girls learn photography, sculpture, painting, and more, for the first time and have the opportunity to explore their passions.  

Project Soar programs address health and wellness also. Many semi-rural and rural communities in Morocco have inadequate access to health education. Additionally, many adolescent girls drop out of school because of the lack of affordable menstrual products. Project Soar’s visiting doctor program helps to teach the girls how to take care of their health, with lessons in nutrition and hygiene. Project Soar is also the pilot partner organization in the Muslim world for BeGirl, a program that provides innovative period kits.

Moroccan adolescent girls have few opportunities for sports and other extracurricular activities. At Project Soar, sports help girls to build self-confidence and strength. The Project Soar Running Club offers girls a chance to meet and train regularly in a safe and supportive environment. Girls are also provided with sports bras and running shoes. Girls can also play basketball, soccer, skateboard or do parcours.

Project Soar also offers a Chess Club as well as yoga and meditation classes, bringing in top notch outside instructors like Jade Azancot, who teach the girls as well as guests at Peacock Pavilions.

The organization also gets the girls out of the confines of their tiny villages by offering them weekend excursions and summer camps.

Project Soar developed Project Soar-in-a-Box to help scale its operations. It includes complete curricula in several areas, with visual examples, detailed instructions, teacher tips, as well as supplies, with all the needed materials and tools to enable local program leaders/partners, eliminating the budget issues that so often plague development work.  Project Soar is aiming to add additional satellite sites in Morocco this year.

Ms. Montague has global ambitions. She adapted Project Soar’s curriculum into a scalable, replicable template for other developing countries and said that she recently made progress toward starting the first branch outside Morocco, in Uganda.

All girls deserve a chance to be the best version of themselves, confident that they are strong, smart, capable, and worthy.

Check out Montague’s book, Marrakesh by Design, a beautiful interior design tome. And, if you are inspired to explore the beauty of Morocco, check out Peacock Pavilions, set in a gorgeous olive grove, just outside Marrakech, with a backdrop of the Atlas Mountains. Shop at the M. Montague on the property or online to bring the beauty of Morocco to your own home. A portion of the proceeds from Peacock Pavilions and the M.Montague Souk go to Project Soar,

Check out We Will Rise, "We Will Rise: Michelle Obama's Mission to Educate Girls Around the World," which features the First Lady, Meryl Streep, Freida Pinto, and CNN's Isha Sesay as they take a journey to Morocco and Liberia, where they meet young women overcoming incredible odds to change their lives.

If you would like to make a donation, visit the Project Soar website. Together, we can help make the world a better place for girls.

Project Soar will also benefit from some proceeds of Ms. Montague’s latest design enterprise — a new fashion line, Agent Girlpower. The small collection includes athleisure wear and jewelry inscribed with feminist messages in both Arabic and English.

Read more about Super Girls all this week on BeautifulNow. See Super Girls Empowered by Oceans, Beautiful Time Travel Portraits of Girls, Super Girls Become Super Women, Super Girls & the Power of Pink and Super Girls Super Code. And check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Wellness, Impact, Nature/Science, Food, Arts/Design, and Travel, Daily Fix posts.

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