I saved the hardest part of this blog post for first because I have been thinking about how to write this since the moment I left and I still do not think I have the right words for it. My host family gave me something I did not fully expect when I walked through their…

ANDD was another really interesting look at how entrepreneurship support can show up in different ways. On the surface it felt familiar, there was mentoring, training, networking, and workshops, which has honestly been a running theme throughout this whole trip. But what made ANDD stand out from everything else we have seen so far was…

I chose to reflect on AI today and honestly it was not a hard choice because this is a topic that has been following me way before this trip even started. As a university student it feels like every other conversation about majors and career paths eventually circles back to AI and which jobs it…

Today we visited a women’s leather cooperative and I will say, walking in I did not fully understand what I was about to experience. We actually got to make a leather hand pouch from scratch with the help of the women there, and I am not going to sugarcoat it, it was tiring. My hands…

A very old Mosque in Marrakech, they had to tear it down and rebuild it. The courtyard was very big, and the roofs of the courtyards had very intricate designs. Our very delicious lunch, I ate it up! We got our names engraved on a brass bracelet! They translated our names into arabic.

Today we learned about the Anou cooperative, a women artisan cooperative here in Morocco, and I will be honest it was one of the more eye opening business talks I have sat through. The model is really simple but in the best way possible. 80% of the profits go directly back to the artisans themselves,…

Today was one of those days where you sit down at the end of it and realize you took in a lot more than you expected to. We spent time doing deep dives into Moroccan religion, politics, and the role of women, and all three of them gave me a lot to think about. On…

So today we got to experience two things we had learned about earlier in the classroom, learning a new language and bargaining in the market. I genuinely enjoyed the language learning part because it feels like something you can actually build on over time, like you practice with the people around you, try it out…

AI Part: Rabat is often described as one of the calmest and most livable major cities in Morocco. It’s the country’s political capital, so it feels more organized and less chaotic than cities like Casablanca or Marrakech. A lot of people compare it to a quieter European coastal capital mixed with traditional Moroccan culture. Day…