Stories & news

For the past two years, LEJO Aalst has extensively implemented the StreetSmart Impact tool within their organisation. In this interview, Jef Prové shares insights into LEJO’s mission, the importance of impact measurement in their work and their experiences with our StreetSmart Impact tool.

On a recent trip to Bolivia, our master trainer Junieth Machado visited the organisation Sociedad San José in La Paz. This active and dynamic organisation has been working for over 145 years with children, adolescents, young people, and their families. They aim to join our network of partners.

During the first week of February, our first brand new mobile school of the year was launched in the city of Yaoundé in Cameroon. Our local partner NM House will utilise the tool to reach out to the numerous street-connected children in the Cameroonian capital.

From February 21 to February 23, youth work practitioners from the worldwide StreetSmart network gathered in Leuven for an enriching three-day seminar focusing on innovative and inclusive youth work practices.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, over 4.793.832 Ukrainian citizens have transited Romania. Most of the Ukrainian refugees are women, while 34% of the Ukrainian refugees are children. To meet the needs of these children, our StreetSmart partner Save the Children introduced a mobile school in the Romanian capital Bucharest in June 2022 to respond to the needs. In this interview with local coordinator Georgiana Dobre, we explore the challenges and successes of providing education and fostering connection for Ukrainian children and families since the beginning of the conflict.

Six months after the devastating earthquakes that hit south-east Türkiye and northern Syria, millions of children are still in need of psychosocial and educational support. To meet the huge needs in the field, StreetSmart recently joined forces with the Turkish association Innovative Solutions for Sustainable Development (ISSDA) to bring non-formal educational activities and play to a container city in one of the hardest-hit areas in the region.

Habbekrats tested StreetSmart Impact for a year and then resolutely chose to implement the tool across its operations. Dries Boeye, Content Coordinator at Habbekrats, tells us more about the organisation and their experiences with our tool.

The StreetSmart Wheels network in Latin America continues to grow! At the end of June, a promising potential partnership was explored in Brazil, the largest country in the region. Our friends at O Pequeno Nazareno are impatient to start using our StreetSmart tools, and we are thrilled to collaborate in providing more opportunities for the many street-connected children and adolescents in Fortaleza.

In August, StreetSmart will start up a new, special StreetSmart Wheels partnership in southern Türkiye, in collaboration with the social enterprise Mikado Consulting. The collaboration is a response to the massive needs for children and young people after the earthquake that hit the region in February. As a response, Ashoka fellows Serra Titiz of Mikado Consulting and Arnoud Raskin of MobileSchool.org and StreetSmart are joining forces to bring non-formal education, trauma- and stress-relief to one of the most-affected areas in the region.

In the second week of May, our team successfully launched mobile school number 66. Our newest magic box will be rolling around the streets of the Bhambayi community in Inanda, near the city of Durban, and is the first-ever mobile school in South Africa!

Since 2018, StreetSmart partnered with Child Rescue Kenya in Kitale to run an outreach project with the mobile school. However, due to the pandemic and internal organizational changes, both parties decided the mobile school could have more impact elsewhere. Thanks to the well-structured team of the International Fellowship Kenya (INTERFELK) and their colleagues of the Kisumu Street Children Rehabilitation Consortium (KSCRC), a new Wheels partnership was rapidly established to give this Kenyan mobile school a fresh start

Children’s rights are under pressure. The aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the intensifying effects of climate change and the disastrous consequences of conflicts have caused a decline in respect for children’s rights in the last decade. To break the downward spiral, MobileSchool.org is taking action. On April 12, International Day for Street Children, the organisation launches the interactive toolkit All Children, All Right(s) and a new social media campaign to present itself as a change agent in the children’s rights debate.