Since August 2003, MSI has helped the United States Department of Labor in a global campaign to combat child labor. In Rabat, Témara, Salé, Casablanca, El Kelaa, and Marrakech, MSI uses education programs to curtail the widespread practice of hiring child laborers. This project, known by its Arabic name ADROS (“I study”), seeks to engender a more educated youth, thereby breaking the cycle of underage domestic servitude.

MSI focuses on the pervasive phenomenon of the petites bonnes, or little maids. Throughout Morocco (and elsewhere in northern Africa), wealthy and middle class urban families adopt or hire young girls from rural, impoverished families who are between the ages of six and fourteen years old. These petites bonnes work as domestic servants, often for hours on end and under difficult conditions. Those who are paid earn as little as one dollar per day. Because these girls are viewed as chattel rather than children, they do not have the opportunity to attend school or play like other children their age.

ADROS has two objectives: to curtail the petites bonnes phenomenon and to raise social awareness about its negative consequences. To achieve these goals, MSI has expanded remedial education opportunities for the petites bonnes and other child laborers. MSI has also designed and implemented an after-school tutoring program for girls who are at risk of dropping out of school and subsequently becoming vulnerable to child labor. The Government of Morocco is adopting this program and will expand it.

With eight staff members in its Rabat office, MSI works with thirty local organizations to implement these goals. In addition to teaching young students, the project also builds organizational capacity among its local non governmental organization partners. MSI strengthens its partners’ ability to monitor education programs and provides training on accountability in the education sector. MSI also works closely with the Government of Morocco in a variety of ways, including the following:

• Supporting the Ministry of National Education and Youth’s Non-Formal Education Initiative;
• Strengthening the capacity of a newly-created unit within the Ministry of Labor, which monitors child labor;
• Helping to design the Moroccan Government’s new INKAD project, which targets the petites bonnes phenomenon;
• Contributing to draft legislation on child labor by suggesting provisions that would restrict the employment of underage girls; and
• Assisting the Ministry of Social Development to draft a strategy to raise capacity of local organization and to design an accreditation system for Moroccan non governmental organizations.

Due to the tremendous success of this project, MSI has recently been awarded a new contract by the Department of Labor to continue to combat child labor in Morocco through 2010.

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