The initiators and founders of the campus vivant'e are Haddou Mouzoun and Stefanie Itto Tapal-Mouzoun.
Haddou is a Berber from the Ait Bouguemez valley. He spent his childhood and school years here and attended the mountain guide school that was then located in the valley. Since then he has worked as a mountain and tourist guide. On a trip he led, he met his wife:
Stefanie Tapal-Mouzoun (Itto, as she is called here) was born and grew up in Germany and completed her interior design studies in Stuttgart. She came to Morocco during a study trip on the subject of "rammed earth construction". On her personal blog www.ittosblog.wordpress.com she writes about her journey from Europe to the High Atlas.
The two have lived together in the heart of Ait Bouguemez since 2005 and are now parents of five children.
The interaction of two cultures, parenthood and the question of educating their own children, working in tourism, as well as Stefanie and Haddou's desire to make a positive contribution to the region, led to the desire to improve educational opportunities in the valley.
The barren reality of the local schools and the discrepancy in living conditions here, compared to the cities or Europe, became the motivation for the two to improve this situation.
Children in the Ait Bouguemez valley have little access to writing in their everyday family and social life. The families here still live in very simple and primitive conditions: without books, paper or writing materials. Many parents, especially mothers, are illiterate and have never attended school themselves or only for a short time.
The école vivante is being created - on to new horizons!
By a lucky coincidence in 2007, Stefanie-Itto and Haddou met students and teachers from the private Swiss school "Scuola Vivante Buchs" (more information in the blog archive: https://freieschule.ch/ ) whom they led through the country on an educational trip to Morocco. A great mutual sympathy and friendly contact developed and the idea of an alternative educational opportunity for the children and young people in Aït Bouguemez was born, based on the fundamental questions:
"How can we create better learning conditions and an attractive infrastructure here?
How can we impart modern knowledge to the children without bringing them into conflict with their family way of life?
How can we sensitively prepare them for the ever-changing living conditions and still strengthen them in their traditional roots and love of their homeland?
How can we create new opportunities and offer better and more global future prospects through individual, creative, comprehensive education that opens up new horizons and promotes personal talents?
How can perspectives for a self-determined life and work in the homeland be created so that unemployment, emigration and frustration do not arise in the first place?"
This first encounter led to years of intensive collaboration with the Swiss school founders Veronika Müller and Jürg Mäder. Several years of self-study, remote coaching, on-site research, requests for official permits and the development of a pedagogical concept followed.
With the opening of the école vivante in 2010 in their own living room, the foundation for today's educational institution campus vivant'e was laid.
As parents of two hearing-impaired children, it was clear to Stefanie-Itto and Haddou over the years that their school must also offer possibilities for physically impaired children (see inclusion).
And so since then, together with the local people and many loyal friends from all over the world, the two have been developing the school and cultural offerings on campus, as well as the infrastructure of the whole, always in line with real needs.
Over the years, the small private school has become a fully-fledged learning campus with a preschool, elementary school and middle school, an adult education center, a permaculture research site and a cultural café.
The two now see themselves as social and educational entrepreneurs and always have new visions. Everything they do is always shaped by the desire to empower people and to offer inspiration for sustainable lifestyles in their own homeland.