From the Yaâcoub El Mansour district in Rabat, King Mohammed VI on Wednesday launched “Ramadan 1445,” a nationwide operation that assists the most vulnerable Moroccans in the month of Ramadan, including widows, the elderly, and people with disabilities.
Led by the Mohammed V Foundation for Solidarity, this year the annual program is expected to aid one million households, benefiting nearly five million people during Ramadan. 82,040 of those households are in the provinces of Al Haouz, Taroudant, and Chichaoua, the principal regions affected by last year’s September 8 earthquake.
With a budget this year of 347 million MAD, Ramadan 1445 will distribute 34,550 tons of food such as flour, milk, rice, oil, sugar, tomato paste, vermicelli, lentils, and tea to Moroccans all across the kingdom.
Over the last 25 years, the Ramadan operation has grown significantly, from 473,900 in 2017 and 600,000 in 2020, to one million beneficiary families in 2023. Spread across 83 provinces and prefectures of the Kingdom, 74% of those live in rural areas.
The implementation of this national operation, financially supported by the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Endowment and Islamic Affairs, involves thousands of individuals, including social workers and volunteers, at 1,304 distribution points nationwide.
Local and regional committees supervise how it is carried out, including monitoring supplies destined for distribution centers, identifying beneficiaries, and distributing the food items. The eligibility of beneficiaries is based upon an annual assessment by local authorities of individual families’ socio-economic conditions.
Various entities such as the Social Services of Royal Armed Forces (FAR), the Royal Gendarmerie, the Ministry of Agriculture, Maritime Fisheries, Rural Development, and Forests, the Ministry of National Education, Preschool, and Sports, as well as other organizations, collaborate with the Mohammed V Foundation for Solidarity to ensure the smooth operation of this solidarity initiative.
The Ministry of Health and Social Protection, along with the National Office for Food Safety (ONSSA), oversees the quality control of the distributed food products.
During the kickoff ceremony, the King handed food baskets to ten representatives of beneficiary families of the “Ramadan 1445” operation before taking a commemorative photo with volunteers participating in the initiative.
Since its inception in 1998, the national food support operation has spent more than two billion MAD, to assist families. The program’s reach has expanded exponentially from a mere 34,100 households in 1998 to one million as of 2023.