As a visitor to Morocco you cannot fail to notice how friendly the people are toward tourists, particularly the children who will regularly wave at you as you pass in the car or offer a shy smile when you meet them in the street. Morocco is a country full of happy people despite significant hardship and limited welfare support. Of course in planning trip you are already doing a huge amount to help the country to develop and as a tour operator we are very proud to promote tourism in a way that help employments and prospects to the people who need it most.

Nowhere have we seen this more dramatically than the villages of Tighanimine, a traditional rural area just to the south of Essaouira on the coast. Since 2005 Fleewinter has been involved in developing the Rebali Riads villa-hotel by the beach in Sidi Kaouki, and we have come to know many of the people in these villages as neighbours and colleagues. Not surprisingly we found that the primary school in the area in full of more of those happy smiling children (see photo above) and a wonderful teacher but we felt we would like to help directly as a thank you for them welcoming us into their community. So in 2011 we launched a programme to raise funds to help the school in a few modest ways. The first year's aims are repair the holes in the roof and built a toilet for the children. To achieve this we are donating £5 for each booking taken and asking our client to match (or better!) this amount - by the end of the year we should have easily achieved our aims.

We have the advantage of the Rebali managers Mohamed and Monika on hand to ensure that every pound donated goes towards directly to the project with no administrative waste and an ability to focus the priorities. With your help we will easily achieve our aims for this year and we will keep this page updated with progress reports on an exciting project.

Many thanks