Travel had always brought Nancy joy, but a recent trip brought her a whole lot more – including an across-the-world move and a complete career change.
‘What country doesn’t celebrate Christmas?’ I tapped the question into my phone.
I scrolled through the search results: Bhutan, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Morocco, Mongolia.
I clicked and read and pondered for over an hour, but my scrolling kept bringing me back to Morocco.
Winter was quickly approaching my hometown of Sherwood Park in Alberta, Canada. I wondered what the coming days and months would look like. I thought about all the things that needed to be done – get the yard cleaned up, put the winter tyres on the car, decide what to do for Christmas. Right, Christmas. My first without him. Our Christmases were often spent tucked away at home with good food and our little traditions, surrounded by friends and family.
But I lost Jay in June.
My husband had spent three years fighting the disease that would take his life. For 20 amazing years, we chose a life together. Then it was just me. With the holidays approaching, I needed to be somewhere else. I craved space and time on my own, in a different place. Travel had always brought me joy. Hopefully, it would provide a little escape for me now.
By the time I went to bed that night, I’d secured the last spot on Intrepid’s Premium Morocco in Depth trip, leaving in mid-December and taking me right through the holiday period. Finally, something to look forward to.
The trip that changed it all
Until that December, I had always travelled independently, either solo or with my husband, and took as much pleasure in planning a trip as actually taking it. But after everything I’d been through, I chose to travel with a small group and a leader, so that I’d have some travel companions, be able to take off my planner hat and just enjoy.
By the time I got on the plane, I began to sense a little of that familiar excitement bubbling up. It was an energy that I hadn’t felt in a very long time.
The trip presented so much in terms of history, food, culture and nature. I marvelled at the Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca as I learnt about Islam. A local family in Meknes welcomed us into their home for a family dinner and we enjoyed endless glasses of tea. As a former student of archaeology and anthropology, I geeked out at the Roman ruins in Volubilis. And I watched the sun set over the Sahara on Christmas Eve.
As we crossed over the Atlas Mountains, our van following winding roads past tiny villages of stone-stacked houses, Allal, our trip leader, shared some facts about life in the mountains. He explained some of the challenges the local Amazigh people face and noted that as many as 70 per cent of the women in those rural areas are illiterate.
Teenage girls in these remote mountain villages often struggle to complete their education. Between the obvious geographical obstacles, like the very real mountains between the girls’ homes and schools, and more nuanced barriers like cultural beliefs that devalue women’s education, many girls don’t finish school. Poverty and early marriages also play a role in preventing girls from graduating from high school, going on to university and having careers.
Allal then told us about Education For All, an Intrepid Foundation partner that establishes boarding houses in rural areas to help address the barriers to education faced by young women.
‘Education For All provides home-like environments with dedicated local housemothers so these girls can go to school and access tutoring and other support,’ Allal shared from the van’s front seat.
We learnt that not long after Education For All set up its first boarding house, families in local communities could see the benefits. Girls’ grades improved and eventually many went on to graduate from university. So far, Education For All has set up six boarding houses across the High Atlas region, welcoming nearly 200 girls each school year.
I looked up at the mountains and considered what it must be like to walk to school in scorching heat or snowy winters. No wonder girls here face such challenges each day just to get to class.
Many times during that trip, I saw the lived experiences of women in Morocco, from the mountains that stand between girls and their education to the cooperatives where women come together to create goods that make money to support their families and community.
Letting life lead the way
By the time I landed back home in Canada in January, I was formulating a plan to return. Something about Morocco was drawing me back – I just couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
I decided to go back for a second time at the end of the year and requested a few extra weeks of unpaid volunteer leave from my project manager role at the energy company I was working at. It was a brutally cold Tuesday morning when I approached my boss, Charlie, with my request.
‘You know what?’ he asked, to my surprise. ‘The company has a policy where you can take up to a year off for volunteer work.’
At first, I didn’t know what to say. My mind flicked to my home in the countryside that I shared with my dog and three cats. Then it flicked back to Charlie’s office and then to Morocco.
‘Alright, I’m taking a year off,’ I blurted out before my mind caught up to my words.
And from that moment, everything unravelled in the most extraordinary way. One by one, friends and family offered to house sit and take care of my pets (three cats and a 155-pound puppy) in my absence. I contacted Education For All to ask about volunteer opportunities and after interviews with the CEO and her team, they offered me a 10-month position to begin in September. I marvelled at how this was all coming together so easily!
I had some trepidation around sharing these plans with my circle. A journey like this was unusual and no one I knew had ever taken such a leap. I was waiting for someone to reach across the table and be like, ‘Are you sure about this? Do you think this is a reaction to your grief?’
But every single one of them just looked at me and said, ‘Yeah, this fits. Have the best time! And let me know how I can help.’
Take a life-changing trip
8 September 2023
I remember it clearly. It was a Friday evening. I was at home after work when my phone lit up with news of a massive earthquake that had struck Morocco.
I tried to piece together what little information I had. It felt like a lifetime had passed before I heard back from Allal and my contacts in Morocco to find out they were OK.
But the 6.8-magnitude earthquake caused widespread destruction, with the worst of it in some of the most vulnerable areas of the High Atlas Mountains. Thousands died and homes and buildings were destroyed.
Education For All lost five of its six boarding houses, including one near the earthquake’s epicentre in Talat N Yacoub, the place I was to call home in just two weeks.
Education For All quickly moved into emergency response mode, trying to reach all of the girls and support their communities. As the dust settled and the extent of the disaster was revealed, they had no choice but to cancel my volunteer assignment.
My heart was breaking for the country and the people whom I’d come to know during my trip. And with an unclear path ahead, I called my mom to lament that, having spent the past months packing up, learning some Arabic and putting my life in Canada on hold, I had no idea what to do next.
‘Well, have you got your work gloves packed?’ she asked.
She was right. I could help. I had no idea where or how, but I could help.
And with that, I got on my flight 12 days later, with nowhere to live and no work to do and went to Morocco. That was a decision that, still, to this day, I can’t quite believe I made.
Read more: How can travel help after a natural disaster?
Gloves on, self-doubt off
Once I landed in Marrakech, I found myself some temporary accommodation and began offering support to any and every organisation that could use it. As an introvert, I’m unsure what drove me to put myself out there like that. But it worked, and before long, I found myself volunteering with another Intrepid Foundation partner, the High Atlas Foundation.
The organisation usually focuses on sustainable development, supporting Moroccan communities with agricultural initiatives, but at the time, it was on the ground, helping get aid into remote communities. For three months, our team organised the provision of food, hygiene items and temporary shelters to the worst-affected communities.
I’d never done anything like this before, but I’d managed projects back home; instead of doing it in the context of an energy company, I used those skills to organise safe drinking water, hygiene and sanitation facilities and provide temporary shelters to the homeless people who were now facing winter in the mountains.
I reached out to Education For All, letting them know I had still come to Morocco and remained available to help them in any way I could. In January 2024, I started volunteering with Education For All full-time. By this time, they’d managed to secure temporary boarding accommodation for 58 girls from Asni in a community near Marrakech where schools were open and I had the chance to visit one of their boarding houses to meet the girls and the housemothers. I was warmly welcomed by all and was amazed at the perseverance of these women.
Even though the temporary houses had little extra space, I was offered a room with a simple bed and a table complete with tea, sweets and other thoughtful amenities. Moroccan hospitality is famous for a reason! Those days and nights spent at the boarding house were passed going for walks, helping with homework, practising English, leading bedtime yoga and listening to the girls’ stories of their lives in the mountains.
Different paths and different places
In April of that year, three months into my volunteering role, the Education For All board proposed that I take on the role of project manager for the rebuilding work, having begun to formulate plans for houses that would need to be rebuilt and the surviving one requiring extensive repairs.
I took some time to consider what this would mean – another year away from my home and beloved pets, another year away from my family and friends. Another request to my employer to consider extending my leave.
But I had witnessed the devastation in those villages, heard the stories of the people who had lost so much, and seen firsthand the importance of Education For All’s work and how it supported the girls I spent time with.
There was really no question of what to do – I was staying.
I stepped into my new role in September 2024, which by that time had evolved into a program director position. The team worked hard to expand our temporary boarding houses and return almost 200 girls to school. Rebuilding in the mountains is a slow process, and we still have a long way to go. My role puts me in touch with the Intrepid team as the Intrepid Foundation is a long-term partner of Education For All, and, together, we’ve set up an internship program to provide opportunities for Education For All graduates.
During a recent visit to the Intrepid office to meet the team and chat about our rebuilding efforts, I met Zahra, an Education For All graduate who now works at Intrepid. She walked me around the office and introduced me to everybody. It was such a full-circle moment to see one of our Education For All grads so confident and thriving in a place that supported her through her school years.
I didn’t know Zahra when she was studying with Education For All, but her story still moves me. Although she was a high-achieving student, before joining Education For All, she’d sacrificed her own education and dropped out so that her parents could afford to send her four brothers and sisters to school. She joined one of the boarding houses near her village when she was just 12 years old.
After this, Zahra graduated high school with flying colours and then became the first woman in her family to graduate from university. During university, she led bike tours around Marrakech to cover rent. She happened to have the day off when her previous housemother contacted her to ask if she would mind accompanying the Intrepid team on a trip from Marrakech to her old boarding house in Asni, in the Atlas Mountains.
During that trip, she met Intrepid’s managing director of EMEA, Zina Bencheikh. They got talking and Zina offered her a paid internship with the team. That was more than five years ago. She’s been promoted three times since then and is now a senior sales consultant.
Spending time with the girls at Education For All and then seeing Zahra out in the workforce at Intrepid has been such powerful proof of how we’re impacting people.
I had learnt about the long, steep, dusty mountain paths that stood between girls and their education during that first trip. And now, I can see the path that Zahra has carved out for herself and how that’s paved the way for so many other women in her community.
Almost two years after that devastating earthquake, the process of rebuilding continues – as does my commitment to Education For All and the girls in our care. I now face another crossroads in deciding what’s next for me. Whatever path I take, I’m grateful for this experience – the friends I’ve made, the places I’ve been and the perspectives I’ve gained. After taking a chance on that first trip, I think I have a better understanding of what it means to live with purpose and to contribute to something that changes a little corner of the world.
You can support Education For All via The Intrepid Foundation. And if you’re looking for your own life-changing adventure, follow in Nancy’s footsteps and explore Intrepid’s Morocco trips.
