By Fatima Zahra El Adraoui (YES 2016-2017, Morocco, placed by Ayusa in Fort Worth, TX)

After a long period of planning and rescheduling due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this past March I attended the “YES Alumni Designing for Inclusion Training of Trainers Workshop” in Alexandria, Virginia. This workshop’s goal was to equip participants with training, leadership, and team-building skills to design and implement an inclusive training on a topic related to supporting people living with disabilities. I was selected to attend this program based on my status as a YES alumna, my experience in advocacy for people with disabilities, and my continued engagement in the YES alumni community.

Throughout the workshop, I learned the necessary skills to design an impactful training that is accessible and inclusive to most disabilities. I also had the opportunity to give a practice training in front of my team and trainer from Mobility International USA (MIUSA), an organization that focuses on advocacy for people with disabilities. Thanks to this opportunity I met allies and people with disabilities who shared their perspectives on how their countries treat people with disabilities and the legal policies that are established to provide support. 

My practice training was about access to information at universities and how to ensure that people with disabilities have equal opportunities to employment. This topic is very important to me as I am a person with a vision disability and am completely blind. As the Moroccan representative among 19 high achieving YES alumni, I plan to continue my advocacy journey and practice what I have learned from this workshop in my current projects. I also plan to collaborate with other YES alumni from Morocco and abroad to organize new initiatives.

I am glad for all the beautiful moments I had with my fellow YES alumni and workshop trainers. They were truly a wonderful group of people, and I grew close to them all. I learned a lot and I had so much fun doing it. I am also so grateful to my recruiting organization, Amideast/Morocco, as their team has never failed to support me in my endeavors since my time on the YES program.