Amal Women's Training Center, Morocco

In Marrakech, Morocco’s third-largest city, we work with an NGO called the Amal Women’s Training Center.

Amal works to promote the social and economic empowerment of women, especially those from marginalised and vulnerable communities.

It’s estimated that women make up only around 25% of Morocco’s workforce — some figures suggest it may be even lower. At the same time, women in work are often paid significantly less than men. Amal is working to change this by offering women skills-development, job opportunities, and financial independence. The project also helps to create new role models for women in the local community and to positively shift attitudes towards women’s participation in the labour market.

One of the programmes they offer is a training course providing practical education in gastronomy and professional kitchen skills. During the free, nine-month course, the women also receive personal development support, for example through weekly coaching sessions, to improve their future job prospects.

Amal runs a restaurant where the students work in real workplace settings, preparing them for the job market. On selected tours, we stop here for lunch.

Amal also runs cookery classes, where tourists and locals take part in authentic Moroccan cooking experiences that both generate income and raise awareness of the project’s social purpose. The students teach at the cookery school under the supervision of a qualified teacher. On some of our tours, you’ll join a cookery class and learn to prepare a traditional Moroccan lunch.

All revenue from both the restaurant and the cookery school goes directly towards funding the training programmes.