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Alumni Association Leadership Training in Morocco

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As part of the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study alumni program, iEARN hosted an Alumni Association Leadership Training (AALT) in Marrakech, Morocco from July 17-22, 2017. The five-day workshop brought together alumni leaders from Cameroon, Israel, Mali, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Suriname for a hands-on training that strengthened the alumni's leadership skills and expanded their knowledge in areas such as project planning, volunteer management, and budgeting. 

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Although each country's alumni association is different, they all strive to influence positive changes in their communities. The AALT provided the tools, strategies and tactics alumni leaders need to fully engage and manage their alumni associations in their own countries while making positive changes in their communities. The alumni explored the components of project planning, practiced creating budgets, developed action plans for maintaining volunteer engagement, and learned how to use social media to report and evaluate activities. 

Below is a reflection by Mohamed Mawassi (YES 2014-2015, Israel -Arab Communities, hosted by AYUSA in Rosebud, MO), one of the participants at the AALT: 

"We embraced our alumni leadership skills as each of us went through the process of identifying goals, creating mission statements, and developing action plans to empower communities around the world. We learned how to overcome the usual struggles in our associations (transportation, money, communications, and getting volunteers, etc.) as our YES alumni team came up with possible solutions for every struggle. We also learned how to finance our projects with the right budgeting strategies." 

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To the right: YES Alumnus, Tamba Abdulai (YES 2013-2014, Sierra Leone, hosted by AYUSA in Greeley, CO) makes a presentation about his project to empower girls through education. 

Outside of the AALT training, the alumni participated in the 2017 iEARN International Youth Summit which took place simultaneously in Marrakech. The alumni learned from international experts in the field of global education and virtual exchange, networked with youth from other countries experienced in global impact projects, and presented on their YES experience and community projects to an international audience.

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To the left: YES Alumni engaged in conversation with Yoko Takagi, iEARN Japan Country Coordinator. 

At the end of the week-long training, the participants practiced pitching their projects and creative ideas to potential funders and partners in 60 seconds! Through the AALT, students not only sharpened their leadership skills and gained new management and mentoring skills, but also strengthened their regional alumni networks. 


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