By Zakia Abdennebi and Tom Pfeiffer

ONE cannot but admire and appreciate how Mohamed el-Assouni's street theatre and circus school has inspired poor and homeless children. The school is a large tent set up on a patch of scrubland between a rail line and a huddle of slums on the outskirts of Morocco's capital Rabat.

A theatre school for street kids Click on thumbnails below to view. Story continues after photos. (Photos: Reuters)

The idea of young boys and girls gathering to learn somersaults, dancing and walking on tightropes has been too much to bear for the radical Islamists living nearby.

Assouni had recently dug a 200-metre trench to bring water and power to the school's tent.

"The Islamists ripped out the pipe and cable in the night. What is wrong with these people? We never bother them. They don't help out these kids in any way, yet they say we 'corrupt' the local children at the (theatre) school."

Judging by the number of children and teens who thronged the tent on a recent Sunday, the Islamists seem to be losing the argument.

Learning to jump on the trampoline, making puppets and taking part in street parades have been a big draw for the children, many of whom already work elsewhere to supplement their parents' meagre income, leaving little time for play. More than 260 have enrolled, but not all turn up.

Pupils who rebel against the quiet discipline required at the theatre workshops are sent away and sometimes, frustrations can boil over. Boys have thrown stones at the tent and one slashed it with a knife.

"Even when the school is shut, you'll see lots of the kids nearby, practising their dance moves or stilt walking," said 25-year-old dance instructor Khalid Haissi, who turned down a circus job in Europe to teach at the school.

Joint effort

Assouni and his wife Soumia founded their Nomad Theatre Association in 2006, and have held their workshops with help from Morocco's National Human Development Initiative, Germany's Goethe Institut and the French government.

He says the self-control and talent of the workshop's young trainers, all from economically-deprived backgrounds, make them powerful role models for other street children - and will hopefully encourage more of them to return to school.

"Our school headmaster always ordered me and the other boys who were not interested in schoolwork to pick up rubbish, so I decided to leave school," said 14-year-old Said Mustapha Khalfi.

"Here they encourage us. I feel like an artiste and I have something to show."

Morocco has one of the worst school drop-out rates in the Arab world, with only one child in 10 completing their education, according to Unicef (The United Nations Children's Fund).

A 2007 World Bank report ranked Morocco 11th in the region in terms of access, equality, effectiveness and quality of its education, only above Yemen, Iraq and Djibouti.

The government designated the last 10 years as the "Decade of Education and Training". Now it has embarked on an "Emergency Programme for the Reform of Education", which will go on till 2012.

The reforms need to start working if Morocco is to find enough trained graduates to compete in world markets and overcome the youth unemployment that breeds despair and makes it easier for violent Islamist groups to recruit new members.

Assouni points to a boy queuing up to learn cartwheels.

"You see that boy? Each weekend I have to go to the cafe where he works as a waiter to bring him down here. That other boy with the red shirt doesn't go to school at all. He goes around with a donkey and cart collecting plastic for recycling."

The workshop is set in the neighbourhood of Douar Mika Plastic Village, so named because families who arrived over the years from the poverty-stricken countryside covered their makeshift shelters with sheets of polythene.

For Assouni, the local children are already walking a tightrope, in danger of falling for Western evils such as alcohol and drug abuse and also religious fundamentalism imported from the Middle East.

"I tell myself that if I can save four or five of these children with every session we do, that's enough," he said.

"Yes I mean 'save' them as they are at risk of being lost to the streets."