Youssef El Yaouti is a Music Teacher and a Human rights activist passionate by cultural rights.In 2002, he joined the Scout’s movement and became the responsible assistant of programming and human resources development.From 2006 to 2010, he started teaching music in ‘’Tinghir’’, a culturally marginalized city in the High Atlas .He established the first Scout’s Movement organization in the city, due to the lack of democracy and transparency at national level, ultimately he decided to resign.In 2010 he applied to be permuted to ‘’Dakhla’’, a city located in the Southern-West of the Sahara. Beside teaching music, he established with a company of some artists and activists a cultural NGO called ‘’ Artistic talents ‘’ they relied on the national authorities’ fund and it was never offered, so it was clear that it’s a dead end.Before 2011 Youssef had no political opinion at all until he saw the reaction of the authorities against the ‘’20th February movement’’, especially when the protestations took an artistic way. He realized that culture is among the most sensitive issues in Morocco. He started asking himself and people around: What would be the best procedure to gather young people in order to teach them arts, human values and help them to create their own artistic works? The question seems very simple but in reality the answer is very difficult.In 2013 he met two cultural activists in Dakhla, one is the leader of a music band, and the other is the director of a language school, and here came the idea of ‘’Cool House’’, an artistic centre that teaches arts in order to form artists, the three of them were discussing the best organism to be chosen for it, meanwhile he represented the project in ‘’Connexions’’ a workshop organized by the ‘’German Commission of UNESCO’’ and ‘’Racines’’ /’’Arterial Network’’. They had an initial opening of ‘’Cool House’’ then he participated in another workshop organized by the ‘’Anna Lindh Foundation’’ in Jordan, when he returned, they were expelled from the school that was hosting their project with no explanation.
Despite those frustrating attempts he was appointed as a Global Youth Ambassador, volunteering with ‘’ A World At School’’ to highlight the problems of education as a whole.
Youssef thinks that his big challenge is to build bridges between ‘’Human rights’’, ‘’Education’’ and ‘’Cultural’’ Activists, for him, the links between those three important elements are almost un-existed, therefore he inquired about the concerned activists about the initiative ; a network of cultural development associations in marginalized cities.
التحديث الأخير: 23 / Aug / 2015