On Saturday, the entire IBM Corporate Service Corp team did some community service in the Casablanca community. Specifically, we went to speak to the kids at the Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-Tech) on the edge of Casablanca.

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P-Tech is an amazing concept. The model for P-Tech was co-developed by IBM working together with educators, policymakers and elected officials. P-Tech is designed to be both widely replicable and in six years, students graduate with a no-cost associate degree in applied science, engineering, computers or other competitive STEM disciplines, with college courses taught by college faculty.

 

They gain mentors and who also help them learn the skills they need to continue their studies or go into high-growth, “new collar” jobs.

 

Most P-Tech schools are in the United States, but they have expanded to Australia and now Morocco, with this being the first school. Students are chosen from nearby and they are what we would term underprivileged and underperforming (due possibly to quality of teaching in their local schools) and driven, extremely driven. School is from 8:00 to 6:00 with Saturday studying and activities extremely common, including this one.

 

Our job was in a way simple – talk to the kids about jobs in IT and jobs that we do with IBM. As a good friend of mine says, we were fortunate enough to win the birth lottery. We all work hard, try to do the right things, but where and when we were brought into this world does matter so it’s extremely satisfying to see something like this program brought to places that need it. To give kids the opportunity to fulfill the potential they have.

 

Most of us were wary of our role in the community service – since this is the first year of the P-Tech school, the entire school is grade 9, basically 14 to 16 year old kids at 9:00 on a Saturday morning – how into it are they going to be? How into it would we have been at 14?

 

They are learning English, French and Arabic. Many of the kids aren’t fluent in French, and science in Morocco is usually taught in French, so they are on their way to being tri-lingual, at least.

 

Based on that, we put up a couple of charts on Corporate Service Corp, why we’re in Morocco, what we do and why we’re here today. Then, we went to Q&A. You can imagine the deal, silence and everyone looking down when one young man raised his hand and came to the front of the room. He had a good question, about challenges, but most importantly, he opened the flood gates. Girls and boys would raise their hand, come forward and we answered questions for nearly 45 minutes. Big, big props to Lafon, our resident attorney at law who had at least a few of the IBMers a bit misty eyed as he explained that we’re here to help them, but they already know what they need to do, they need to focus, ask for help and keep driving. I’m not giving it enough justice, it was amazing.

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We named their turtle – Speedy! We made friends and I hope I can come back and see where these kids go over the next few years.

 

I actually have a couple of colleagues in the US who went through the P-Tech program in New York. I received some looks of disbelief when I told them that as well as follow up questions about how they can do that.

 

I’ve volunteered in Mexico and the US and done things with younger children and this was my first time working with older kids and it was amazing! After our Q&A, we split into groups and played football (soccer), basketball and did a marshmallow challenge. If you haven’t done it, you probably will so I won’t go into detail. The important part is that we bonded like I would never have expected. From the one young man asking me which programming languages he should focus on – I sent him to a couple of our software engineers to just random requests for group selfies. The time flew and when we left, there was a lot of lingering and hugs. 

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We extended our family yet again, Morocco and its people are amazing.

We took a lot of great photos here and this was such a neat event that it deserved its own post. I’ve added a ton of pics in a separate page if you’d like to see the future of Morocco and other countries as I bet these kids go far and wide!! – more to come from Rabat, the capital city.