Actualités & récits

Last September, our trainer Bram Van de Putte conducted a successful prospective visit with the Inuka Network in the Kenyan city of Eldoret. Two and a half months, we are extremely excited to launch the mobile school and the educational materials during a two-week implementation training with the new team of street educators.

Slowly but surely, our StreetSmart Wheels trainers are again able to explore new potential partnerships with local street work organisations. Last week, we visited Kigwe Social Economic Development and Training (KISEDET), an organisation based in the Tanzanian capital Dodoma to investigate if we can set up a long-term partnership with them in the near future.

After an inactivity of almost 18 months, we were finally able to send out one of our trainers again to conduct a week-long prospection visit. In the city of Eldoret in Kenya, trainer Bram Van De Putte explored a potential partnership with the recently established Inuka Network.

It was once again an inconvenient truth, the article published last week by Belgian newspaper De Standaard about the growing number of unaccompanied minors living on the streets of Brussels. The phenomenon is not new, but the numbers seem to be on the rise. Despite the fact that we’re not working directly in the field in Brussels, we want to share our vision on how we can offer perspective and opportunities to this group of youngsters.

It's that time again! 1 September, the official start of the new school year. For many students in our country and far beyond, perhaps the most exciting day of the year. Especially after an eventful year like the past one, when the corona pandemic came to disrupt the normal way of working more than once. But unfortunately, the impact of the pandemic continues to this day to have a gigantic impact on education systems worldwide.

After the previous update at the end of April, we recently released a brand-new version of StreetSmart Impact, our data registration and case management app for youth workers. With major improvements on the reporting and the ‘I Am StreetSmart’ app for youngsters, the app is now even more convenient to track your impact.

High-quality youth work demands high-quality materials! That’s why we decided in 2019 to launch StreetSmart Play, an online content platform where youth workers can consult and share their best educational games with their colleagues worldwide.

We’ve been waiting for it for so long, but now the time has finally come! Thanks to the rapid rollout of COVID vaccines, there is hope for a sunny summer full of social activities. High temperatures, more social contact and the prospect of bigger events give everyone a much-needed mental boost. Our MobileSchool.org team is also enjoying that boost and is carefully coming together again after months of working from home. The perfect moment for us as a team to set new goals and to look forward to the coming months.

More than a year into the pandemic, the street workers of our local partners are still doing their utmost to stay in close contact with their target groups. After a successful virtual exchange last year, the StreetSmart team organised a second global online exchange to allow partners to exchange tips and tricks on how to conduct street interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

2020 got off to a promising start. StreetSmart planned to start up 5 new ‘Wheels projects’ (mobile schools) in Georgia, Poland, Turkey, Uganda and Sri Lanka. Logistics and training were planned, our partners stood ready to hit the streets and reach out to the street connected children and youth. The first new project began early 2020 in Sri Lanka.

Yes, let’s! Because talking about sexuality with children and young people is crucial. Young people who receive a qualitative sexual education make more conscious decisions, are less at risk of STDs and sexually transgressive behaviour and are happier in their relationships. So, there’s more than enough reasons to talk about sex!

Last year, 1.5 billion young people worldwide stayed at home to stop the spread of COVID-19. Estimations state that 9.7 million of these children will never be able to go back to school after the pandemic. Many of these kids will end up spending a lot of their time on the streets to contribute to the family income and to find ways to survive… The COVID-19 pandemic has once again painfully highlighted how street-connected children are too often excluded. That’s why it’s more important than ever to put the International Day for Street Children in the spotlight, in order to ensure street-connected children get more included both during and after the pandemic.