The programme is part of a large-scale plan to launched in 2000 to open up mosques for literacy, religious, civil and health-related lessons, under the supervision of the ministry of Islamic affairs.

   The initiative has given to mosques back their vanguard role in education and in building a democratic, modern and developed society based on rejecting exclusion and marginalisation, and fighting poverty and ignorance.

   On this occasion, Islamic affairs minister, Ahmed Toufiq, presented to the Sovereign the results and prospects of the literacy programme. He said the ten-year programme (2000-2010) has benefited to 921,594 (including 36 pc in rural areas), of whom 635,209 people can now read and write.

   The programme is expecting to help over a million people out of illiteracy between 2011 and 2016, the minister said, adding that 380,000 have benefited from the programme in the first two years of the current decade. The number of mosques taking part in the programme rocketed from 200 in 2000 to 3,846 in 2012.

   Part of the care the monarch gives the programme, he handed awards and certificates to the meriting students of the literacy programme at the national level. These include Zineb El Habti (Kenitra), Naima Amine (Guercif), Mahjouba El Aamari (Zagoura), Fatiha Joual (Sidi Bennour), Meriem El Kentami (Dakhla), Naima Itouni (Chefchaouen), Fatema Krechmane (Tan Tan), Zoubida Sakouri (Khenifra), Ilham Harmach (Deriouch) et Malika Farih (Casablanca).