Responsible travel news from the field - Dar 91 Essaouira

We donate 10% of our profits to local good causes, and through this we are, amongst other things, sponsoring two Moroccan children through school.

Kamal is 12 years old and lives in a tiny hamlet about 5km from El Henchane (a village on the Essaouira-Marrakesh road), with his mum, dad and four younger siblings. His dad is physically disabled and therefore unable to work the small patch of land the family owns. Someone else works it for them and they share the proceeds - but even at the best of times theirs can be a precarious existence.

The teacher who suggested Kamal as a child we should consider helping, is a trusted friend and is really enthusiastic about his prospects. Last month we went to visit Kamal’s family and his mother proudly showed us his school reports: he is doing particularly well in maths, religious education and Arabic language.

We want to make sure Kamal continues to fulfil his educational potential. At the moment this means him staying in a boarding hostel in El Henchane during the week, and then walking the 5km back every Friday. So we’re paying for books, travel to and from the hostel, and school clothes.

Nohra is ten, and lives on our street in Essaouira. She's a lovely, friendly girl who has always said hello to us whenever we're in town, and over the years we've got to know her and her family. She is the youngest of six children - all the others are boys. Her father left home earlier this year - a mixed blessing for Nohra's mother, who now does what she can to scrape a living together and keep her sons in check.

The family live in two rooms in a shared building, so it's hard for Nohra to concentrate on school work. She also craves her mum's one-to-one attention so had started to play truant, something her mum felt torn about, since having Nohra at home to share the housework was a big help, even if she knew the best thing would be for her to be at school.

We intervened and are now helping in various ways: firstly by paying for Nohra's books, school clothes and some extra lessons (she has a lot of catching up to do); second by recruiting our house manager Naima to liaise with the school and keep a check on Nohra’s progress, as well as overseeing her homework (and when our house isn’t booked, providing her with some quiet space in which to do it) and third by throwing whatever work we can in Nohra's mum's direction. Our aim is to make sure Nohra stays in school until she has at least finished her secondary education.

We ask guests who stay at Dar 91 to bring any unwanted clothes (friends in the UK also send clothes to us, which we take out whenever we're going there), and we distribute these directly to people in need in and around Essaouira. We are also developing a dental hygiene project, to be launched later this year in an attempt to combat the frightening levels of tooth decay in local children.

Jeremy, Dar 91 Essaouira