Territorial Coaching is an innovative approach developed in the Oriental Region of Morocco in partnership between the Council of the Oriental Region, the Oriental Development Agency, the Mohammed The First University of Oujda, the Belgian NGO Échos Communication, and UCLG Africa. This approach was developed following the adoption of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Morocco adopted in 2011, highlighting advanced regionalization as a major development management option in Morocco. This option calls for an evolution of the modes of management of public affairs, which previously was more centralized, and which must gradually become more decentralized. The transition from centralized management to decentralized management of public affairs requires the adoption of new relationships between actors and new behaviors of each of them with regard to the others, starting with public actors, between the central Government and local authorities, and between the different levels of local authorities, but also between public actors, civil society, and the private sector.
The greater attention paid to territorial development within the framework of the option of advanced regionalization would require particular emphasis to be given to supporting participatory democracy as an essential ingredient for rebuilding the relationships of trust between the populations and the institutions and renegotiating on new bases the methods of mobilizing the stakeholders of a given territory with a view to its sustainable human development. Concerning the new relationships and new behaviors to be adopted in order to be consistent with the decentralized management of public affairs, all the players concerned are in a learning situation.
In a context of changes and crises observed at all levels and at all levels, the question of the sustainable and integrated development of local authorities leads them to revisit the way of apprehending the general interest, of organizing the convergence of public and private actions, to organize the production of wealth and to involve all the players in the public sectors, civil society, and the private sector in the governance of the territory.
The Territorial Coaching approach was developed to support this shift from centralized management to decentralized management of public affairs while encouraging a more participatory governance of territories. To offer this support, it was necessary to train and rely on the Territorial Coach who is a professional in terms in terms of mediation and consensus building around issues identified as priorities and strategies for the future of the territory. Territorial Coaches know the potential and the difficulties experienced by a territory; it arouses emulation and dialogue between actors; Territorial Coached identify the divergent visions between actors of the territory and assists the protagonists to explore the methods of overcoming the divergences or building convergent visions; The Territorial Coach stimulates within the local society between actors the emergence of a common vision of the development of the territory. The Territorial Coach is a revealer of the potential of the development of the territory carried by the mobilization of its living forces. It organizes citizen meetings to discuss the main problems perceived as priorities by the populations and to collect the maximum number of proposals with a view to solving them.