Jacquetta Wheeler in Tangier in April 2007. The Darna Girl's Center wlll take delivery of raw space in fall 2007. The 212 Society's donors will finance interior renovation, equipment and startup costs for the Girl's Center. Over the past 16 years, the houses of Darna, (run by Mounira Bouzid El Alami, a 61-year old psychotherapist specialized in child guidance) have served people in Tangier begining with the youngest: newborns, awaiting adoptive parents in the Nursery. The Shelter provides an emergency and long-term home for street boys; during the day they join the Community Center for Boys and the Pedagogical Farm, where nearly two hundred healthy, enthusiastic "Darna Boys" get literacy and professional training, take civics classes, and get a safe, clean, healthy place to live away from the streets. Girls learning to bake at the House of Women. For women at risk, the Community House of Women provides safe and stable temporary daytime communal learning environments, with an education in both practical job skills -- they produce extraordinary textiles and run the best restaurant in the area -- and their rights and duties as citizens, with a real opportunity to reintegrate into the mainstream of Moroccan society. Today Darna has no overnight Center for Girls, and without a place to go as night falls, many girls are forced into dangerous and harmful situations. As part of its ongoing work with Darna, the 212 Society has committed to fund and build the city's first Center for Girls. The 212 Society supports cultural and educational projects in Morocco, with a special focus on the city of Tangier. The Society is a non-profit organization incorporated in New York State, founded by writer and actor Sean Gullette, with Simona Schneider and Maya Fineberg, and takes its name from the 212 telephone codes of its home city and adoptive country. 212 Society Board Member Jacquetta Wheeler has taken the lead in planning a fundraising campaign with the goal of raising US $350,000 to build, equip and staff the Darna Center for Girls. With your help, the Darna Center for Girls can be built and operating before the end of 2007. Warm thanks go to all those who supported the 2006 campaign, which brought us more than halfway to our goal. Darna is an accredited and certified Moroccan nonprofit organization, whose work has been praised by press from Time magazine to Le Monde, governments and leaders including the King of Morocco, French President Jacques Chirac and Madame Asnar of Spain, and leaders of the World Bank. In 2006, Mounira Bouzid El Alami accepted the French Legion of Honor Medal, France's highest civil award, on behalf of Darna. In addition to fundraising campaigns to support Darna, The 212 Society runs annual workshops for Darna students. The Tangier Treehouse Project and the Orange Bicycles Project were the two most recent workshops. GIRLS AT RISK A girl selling gum in the streets. Poor girls in Morocco face terrible realities. Parents made desperate by poverty exploit children as a source of income, often the primary source. Sexual abuse and incest is shockingly common in poor familes. Unmarried girls who become pregnant face a harsh stigma. Girls are forced from their homes and villages by poverty, family stresses, physical and sexual abuse, and the pariah status of rape victims. Many make their way to dangerous streets of cities like Tangier. On the streets, traumatized, illiterate and uneducated, some with babies in their arms, their options are limited. Besides begging and petty theft, many girls accept emploment as domestic servants, where the cycle of exploitation and abuse often begins again. Those on the streets make easy prey for pimps and street gangs; with prostitution come the deadly hazards of drugs (glue sniffing is most common) and AIDS. Just 12 kilometers from Europe, Tangier has the largest black economy in Morocco, which presents special dangers. Smugglers and human traffickers use children as pawns in their operations. Cops brutalize them around the port. Sex tourists target the city. With the glittering coast of Spain visible day and night, the allure of illegal emigration has lead thousand of children to their deaths, inside the wheel wells of trucks on the ferries, and in the treacherous waters of the Strait of Gibraltar. Homeless boys, their sweaters filthy and noses running from sniffing glue, are an all-too common sight around the port and on the streets of Tangier. Girls, who cannot move so freely, tend to be less visible on the streets, but Darna knows they are a population in dire need. Every story is different, but they all lead to the same message: I can't go home. With your help, the doors of the Darna Center for Girls will be open to all these girls, as it has been there for hundreds of boys and women in the past decade. The Center for Girls will first of all offer safe housing to poor students. The Girls' Center, in concert with the Darna House of Women, will also provide a population of 80-100 girls with a community of learning and empowerment; emergency, transitional, and long term housing; professional and civic training; and an education in not only reading, writing and arithmetic but also in their rights and duties as citizens. Darna has 62 paid social workers -- in addition to numerous volunteers -- who will take an active role in rebuilding the girls' links with their families, and supporting them in their social and professional integration. The poor students will find themselves at the heart of the citywide Darna network: taking classes and finding role models at the House of Women, the Darna Community Centers, the Pedagogical Farm, the Newspaper and Little Theater, and the entire community that is Darna. A sewing workshop at the House of Women. OUR GOAL Our current goal is to build and fully equip the Center for Girls, and provide Year One operating expenses; including all staff salaries. The Center for Girls will have its permanent home in a complex being built by the highly respected Tangier-based firm Group El-Alami and their Lotinord division. Lotinord will deliver the raw space in fall 2007. With grants and support from the 212 Society, Darna will turn this empty raw space into the Center for Girls. We are now actively seeking private and foundation support to a total of USD $350,000 to create the Center for Girls. THE FACILITY The Center for Girls will be open 24/7 to provide immediate and longer-term shelter and services to girls of all ages. For younger girls and recent arrivals, an open dormitory with 50 beds. For older girls, young mothers with children, and residents, 50 private rooms Open kitchen and dining area Communal living area with TV, books, and games Classroom Library/homework space/computer lab Laundry Room Showers and bathrooms Administrators' and managers' apartment Rooms will also be made available to low-income female students who otherwise couldn't afford to live near Tangier schools. This means we need to finance: Architect Interior walls Flooring Doors and windows Kitchen Fixtures and Appliances Bathroom Fixtures and Appliances Electric Plumbing and Heating System Beds, desks, tables, chairs, and other furniture Laundry Washers and Dryers STAFF The 212 Society will administer a fund to to pay salaries and fixed costs (salaries, insurance and utilities) for Year One of the Center for Girls. The Staff includes a Permanent On-Site Director and Adminstrator; two Project Managers; an Outreach Officer to seek out girls at risk and lead them to the Center; a part time Child Psychotherapist; and 2-3 overnight staff, a security guard and housekeeper. At standard Tangier wages, all of these salaries can be paid for $28,264/year. FINANCE AND LOGISTICS The Darna architect, Tangier activist Hanah Bekari, is uniquely familiar with the needs of the organization and works in an intensively hands-on style to secure best results for the organization. She will design the interior spaces of the Girls Center. The general contracting of the building as a whole will be undertaken with the supervision of the El Alami Group/Lotinord (donors of the space) whose extensive contacts and experience in construction in Tangier will ensure best prices and practices from all vendors. Vendors invoices will be paid from an account requiring signature by the 212 Society. A detailed and comprehensive "Final Project Accounting" will be distributed to all donors at the end of the construction process. Donors will be invited to attend the inauguration of the center. The 212 Society is a New York State nonprofit, with federal 501c3 tax-exempt status, under EIN #84-1666719. Contributions to the 212 Society are be tax deductible to the extent allowed by law. The costs of fundraisings events are be fully covered by sponsorship so that all donations to the 212 Society Darna Girls Center Project will go directly to the program. Jacquetta at the Darna Teaching Farm. To make a donation, or discuss sponsorship, please contact The 212 Society: Sean Gullette, President, The 212 Society 77 Bleeker #631 New York NY 10012 Telephone: 212.475.1953 FACTS AND FIGURES 2 average amount in US dollars paid to child prostitutes 90 percent of rural girls who are illiterate 450 number of children who live on the streets of tangier 67 percentage of women who are illiterate 89 percentage of women in rural areas who illiterate 200,147 number of calls to a sexual abuse hotline between January 2000 - September 2001 48 Number of sexual abuse investigations resulting from those calls 50 percent of girls who under the age of 10 when they are sent to the city to work domestic servants. 39.4 percent of females 15 years old and older who can read and write 19 percentage of the total population remains below the absolute poverty line (about one dollar per day). SOURCES "Situational Analysis of Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Morocco" Dr. Najat M'Jid, ECPAT Interntional, 2003 National Monitoring Center for Child Rights, Morocco, 2002 "Report on Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the Kingdom of Morocco." United Nations, 2003 CIA World Fact Book, 2005 "Child Prostition and the Spread of AIDS," AIDScience, 2005 "US State Depatment Trafficking in Persons Report," 2005 Association DARNA, Reports and Studies, 1995-Present "Morocco The Development Challenge," USAID Country Report, 2005 To support the Darna Center for Girls, contact Darna or the 212 Society.

Click here to download a printable PDF of the complete Darna Girl's Center Proposal.