Founded in 2004, Centre Social Kariat (CSK) is a non-profit, non-governmental organization based in Salé, Morocco. Our purpose is to help children with disabilities and their families with love, compassion and commitment. Our vision is to empower children with disabilities through physical therapy, training, education, emotional care, practical help and giving advice and by that try to integrate them as far as possible into every day life in Morocco. CSK believes that all children are valued as individuals who grow, develop and learn. Despite their challenges, these children have the potential to live more enjoyable lives and make a contribution to society.
The story of Centre Social Kariat (CSK) is strongly connected to the personal story of Louis Brosky, founder, director and ‘father’ of CSK. In the 1980's, Louis moved from Holland to Morocco with his wife and six children. Being a physical therapist, he hoped to find a way to help disabled children (mental and physical) and their parents by creating a place where they could feel at home. Over the years he learned what was needed in Morocco and worked out his ‘family-therapy-philosophy’. In 2003 he went to Kariat Oulad Moussa in Sale and roamed the streets in search of families with handicapped children. He asked them if they needed therapy. ‘Yes, please’, was the answer, ‘but we can not pay for it’. His answer was, as it is today, ‘I will do it for free’.
The message spread across Kariat and soon mothers began to bring their children. The first volunteers from the UK and Korea came to help Louis. The work grew rapidly, the numbers of children, and more importantly, the relationship with the mothers and their children grew. Louis’ family-therapy philosophy proved to be working. Mothers got involved in lessons on how to give simple therapy to their children at home. The locals from Kariat got to know the Centre and respected it for its special work. Acceptance and integration grew and mothers found it easier to take the step to open the door of CSK.
CSK grows in quantity and quality. More programs are developed and help to offer a wide range of support to the children and parents. More importantly, there is time to talk and to relate to one another. By telling their stories to each other and to the staff of CSK, they get heard, problems are being shared, help can be offered, and a family feeling is created.
Having read our story, you can also take from it that our association has existed for over 20 years now. We have been serving children and their families, of whom many by now have become adults, for over 2 decades.
However, many challenges and difficulties have been on our path, trying to serve the members in our association. We will not go into all the details here, but to point out a few: our young adults are not finding long term work experiences or possibilities. We are doing our best to create those for them, in the meanwhile the other (older) children are having to share the same programs we offer, with them. This is leading to a bottleneck there, which then again is resulting in logistical problems. In other words, logistics have become an interference in meeting the needs of our members. Our cherished, but severely handicapped members are looking for a place to come to, where they can enjoy themselves, get out of the regular circumstances of their life, while having the people that care for them around them and through support and adaptation be part of the programs that are available. Sadly, our accommodation has not been able to be a healthy and practical place like that for them. Forcing us to always be on the move to take them somewhere to go to.
This brings us to our need: In order for us to be able to keep meeting the special needs of our beloved members across all groups, we are in need of a piece of land of at least 2 hectares with the presence of water, in the range of 20-25 minutes by car from Kariat. We need to be able to construct necessary facilities on this land.
These facilities contain: a house with kitchen, rooms to gather in and give classes, a swimming pool, a small basketball/football court, stables for horses and ponies and other animals.
There also has to be enough land for agriculture, which will lead to many opportunities in all kinds of ranges for our members, and especially for them to work, as well as financial opportunity for this family farm project, as it will fund the activities of this project long term.
Can you be of help? Contact Us