Empowering girls through education, Project Soar Morocco has rapidly expanded from its original village — Douar Laadam in Marrakesh — to twenty-one sites across Morocco, serving hundreds of girls, according to the New York Times. The project aims to keep girls in school, enhance their education, inform them about developmental changes in their bodies as they mature (including providing them with hygienic menstruation kits so they don’t drop out of school), and encourage them to become leaders in Moroccan society, passing on what they have learned in the process.
Maryam Montague, the founder and director of Project Soar, has been a resident of Morocco since 2006 and is the proprietor of the Peacock Pavilions boutique hotel in Marrakesh. Project Soar is not only a way for her to give back to her adopted home, but also a way to fill a critical need to support girls as they become young women and enter into society. Long an icon of the Marrakesh fashion and design scene, as chronicled in her popular blog My Marrakesh and her book Marrakesh by Design, Maryam nevertheless has a core commitment to bettering the lives of those around her.
While Morocco has been the staging ground for the launch of Project Soar, Maryam has wider ambitions to expand the Project to other countries. The program — Project Soar in a Box — is designed to be easily replicated by trained volunteers and groups of girls, allowing not only for rapid and effective expansion but also sustainable development beyond the confines of Project Soar itself.