There are two things that come up regularly in autumn, and which would be commonplace if they were widespread in Morocco:
- the upsurge in applicants to open a riad in Marrakesh, because of a TV programme (for example the umpteenth re-run of “Des Racines et des Ailes” or the issue of Capital, which is a bit old now, explaining that you could buy a riad in the medina for very little money)
- the flood of sponsorship applications for the 4L Trophy, a student rally that crosses Morocco on a so-called ‘humanitarian’ and ‘ecological’ mission
While the former are mainly to be found on the forums, the latter have a nasty habit of clogging up our mailboxes. The last message we received was over 17 mega! This is an event that we will never sponsor, both out of conviction, against what I call bad ecological and solidarity alibis, and out of good economic sense.
The solidarity alibi
The pitch for the raid, as it appears on their website, is this:
The 4L Trophy ™ is an Adventure Raid reserved for students in the Moroccan desert aboard a Renault 4L. Young people in search of Adventure live a unique experience combining sporting challenge, change of scenery and solidarity.
Solidarity, because the aim of the 4L Trophy ™ is also to send school and sports supplies to the most underprivileged children in Morocco. Over the years, this recipe has made the 4L Trophy ™ Europe’s leading student sporting and humanitarian event!
A little further down the page, it is specified that 80 tonnes of school supplies will be brought in, via a rally starting on 17 February 2011. That’s almost six months after the start of the new school year!
In other words, a summary of what not to do.
Helping effectively means not turning into a vroom-vroom distribution machine
Yes, it’s good to help children study, yes, education is one of the two priority sectors in Morocco, and incidentally, yes, the 4L Trophy’s privileged partner, the Enfants du Désert association, is a serious organisation.
But…
1- the distribution, as shown in this photo report on Flickr by ||37|*( looks more like a big media circus with cameras and staging than anything else.
Normally, in “humanitarian”, there is “human”, and one would hope at least for a contact, a discussion, an exchange. No, we have an army of tourists who bring in a sea of supplies, hand them out in a hurry while taking photos of themselves, and then leave. Where’s the contact with people?
2-Even if the associations are serious, how can we really target, avoid abuse and misappropriation of such a large amount? Anyone who works in Morocco knows that when you give money, you have to follow it up very closely. Who will do this?
3-The real needs lie elsewhere than in “schoolbag operations” (especially in the middle of the school year). They lie in building schools, providing sanitary facilities, transport for pupils and even accommodation. They’re involved in events and twinning. Lots of things that can’t be photographed in a huge display. Saying that we’re going to “get children into school in good conditions” or even “get them into school” at all because we give them a schoolbag full of school supplies is pushing the marketing envelope a bit too far.
4-When you organise distributions like this, it’s not surprising that tourists/Europeans are seen as distributors. It’s a very harmful transformation of the relationship, a monetisation of the exchange that translates in other ways, in the same places, into “give me a dirham, give me a euro”.
School supplies are available locally in Morocco
This is something we tend to forget. In Morocco, even in small villages, there are vendors who sell these notebooks, schoolbags and pens. At a much lower price than in Europe. If you’re going to give away something, you might as well give it away cheaply (and therefore more), and not wreck the local economy.
Wouldn’t this kind of distribution be much more useful if money were collected, used to buy in Morocco and then distributed? (Which would also make it possible to buy things you can’t find in France, like Moroccan school textbooks, Arabic dictionaries, etc.).
The ecological cost of transport is absurd
The 4L is certainly not one of the most environmentally-friendly vehicles in existence. It dates from a time when such concerns did not exist. So, even if it’s been ‘refurbished/tuned/improved’, transporting 80 tonnes of equipment in small, clunky cars instead of by lorry/boat…. pollutes, pollutes a lot. A rally isn’t great enough, but a rally of 4Ls isn’t good, and a rally of overloaded 4Ls… that’s the limit. The entry fee includes a carbon offset, and I’d be curious to see how that’s calculated.
They say that the ecological aspect has not been forgotten.
The Trophy website also states:
That’s why the organisation is taking various actions to preserve this sumptuous country. The participants are obviously concerned by this approach. They are made aware of the need to collect waste and to drive more flexibly to reduce fuel consumption.
supplemented by a special Deloitte prize for the best ecological actions.
From what you read, it seems that the main focus is on litter picking. That’s already better than nothing, in a country where plastic bags cling to every bush.
But there’s also the impact of the rally…. rally is a race, but it’s also off-road. Already, when one or two 4x4s from our circuits pass by, we try to be very careful, and we take part in carbon offsetting operations to try and replant elsewhere.
But here, imagine hundreds of cars doing that:
or that
(You can see the dozens of tracks in this photo, which the author doesn’t want to share on other blogs).
The desert is a very fragile environment, ecologically speaking. When a car drives by, the little plant that has taken months to grow, taking advantage of the slightest drop of rain, the slightest moisture, dies. And everything that goes with it.
If there’s one thing I don’t like… it’s tyre tracks in the dunes.
A commercial enterprise
Yes, that’s the Dakar track, which passed near Tazarine. And there’s a commercial enterprise behind the 4L Trophy. To present it as a humanitarian rally is to put accessory and alibi before reality.
Contrary to what the communication would have you believe, the 4L Trophy is not an NGO, it’s not a humanitarian action. It is a product organised by a company, Desertours, founded by former Dakar participants, and a very profitable one at that.
Participation in the Rally costs 3,360 euros this year. This does not cover lunches, drinks, petrol, tolls and the return journey to the starting point. That’s around 195 euros per person per day. Without plane ticket. That’s almost double the cost of a tour on our own, in a small group and without the effect of mass and negotiation.
It’s true that these costs include “the promotion and media coverage of the event in the year leading up to the start, during and after the raid”. In other words, Désertours advertising.
Why sponsor such an event? What are the returns?
No matter how hard I look, I don’t see how sponsoring a crew could be of any use to us. The spin-offs in terms of image linked to a small sticker lost on one car among hundreds? …. nil.
The reasons put forward by the applicants (always the same ones, you’d think there was a briefing from the organisers) are broadly speaking:
- to raise our profile
- to improve our image in Morocco by showing, and I quote my last applicant, “Showing the interest you have in its development and in the education of needy children” (ugh, that’s an ugly word)
- convey strong values by being associated with the Trophy’s actions
Raising the profile of our agency through the 4L Trophy?
We have to be realistic: companies that sponsor student activities are not doing so to make themselves known to their customers, but to their potential future employees. It’s more of a human resources budget than anything else.
But the Oasis de Mezgarne can’t see itself hiring a brilliant H.E.C. or Essec or whatever to guide tourists in the desert.
What’s more, I have no desire whatsoever to sponsor a company, Desertours, which organises events with which we completely disagree.
On the other hand, it’s a bit tiresome to receive such requests from marketing students. Either they don’t understand anything they’re studying, or they think I’m an idiot!
Improving our image in Morocco?
Let’s just say that our clientele is not very Moroccan (unfortunately), and that above all, we have our own actions. Proposing to a Moroccan company to show its interest in its own country…. I’d be happy to explain a few things to you about what we do, and what may or may not be interesting in terms of communication for a Moroccan company.
Conveying strong values by being involved in Trophy actions?
No, we don’t want to be associated with the Trophy. The values we’re trying to promote are, in particular, those of slow tourism, of a real exchange between the visitor and the local people, of a discovery that takes place at the pace of the desert.
The desert is anything but a car rally. Solidarity action, except in emergencies, is not about “distributions to needy children”.
A little savoir vivre in your requests
But if I could at least be taken for an idiot with “courtesy” and respect for netiquette.
No, every year I receive emails of several megas, the icing on the cake being a 17 mega email I received yesterday. 17 megas, in Morocco, when you’re doing your job as a tourism professional and you’re not at your desk, or when Maroc Télécom is having hiccups, can easily represent several hours of downloading (several hours because it stops, starts again, you don’t know where it’s at).
And during this time, an urgent email that I had to send to a client remained ‘in the pipe’, and was not actually sent until 5 hours after I’d clicked the ‘send’ button.
The second thing is to personalise the message for me. As you can’t guess that I’m totally against this rally, instead of sending a standard, non-personalised message, try to really explain why it’s interesting for me, Oasis de Mezgarne, a travel agency in Morocco, already doing ‘fair trade’/’solidarity’ work, a small business whose staff don’t care that there are stickers on a 4L, and whose potential customers can’t find them in the crowd… Explain to me, maybe if there’s local communication, if you’re a provincial school, if this, if that…
You know, asking for money is like applying for a job – you have to put your money where your mouth is. (NB business school applications are far from the best). So don’t send me a circular email, send me a real email!
The third thing is not to send an email to your entire address book in the recipient list. As if I didn’t get spammed enough already!
Yes, because when you put an address on a recipient list with lots of other “colleagues and competitors”, there are always 4 or 5 of them to remember it, and then send me all the promotional emails.
There’s a simple trick called “blind copy”, which is the little CCI field in your email software, or on Yahoo… and it’s used to hide the recipients. Alternatively, there’s also a simple php function for sending mailings.
If you have a website, take advantage of it to lighten up the sponsorship file, and above all don’t leave any big mistakes in it.
The fact that students whose school has been taking part in the rally for 9 years are putting Zagora to the north-east of Ouarzazate, on the road to Erfoud gives me doubts about their ability to win the orientation tests.
For IT students, on the other hand, we have a permanent internship offer. It’s not as ‘sexy’ as the rally, but it’s still very interesting.
(This article was first published on the former Oasis de Mezgarne website. It has been widely discussed on the 4L forums, notably here).
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