Stories & news

The mobile school is often described as a magic box and the street educators as magicians, who make the magic happen on a daily basis. During a one-week prospective visit in the city of Mardin in south-eastern Turkey, Mobile School was able to meet a lot of potential new magicians. The organisation Her Yerde Sanat Derneği (Art Everywhere Association) offers social circus and musical programmes to vulnerable children in a region where it’s difficult to be a child.

He started up his first street work programme in 2010. Three years later, he became the driving force behind the mobile school project in Bytom and in 2015, he joined Mobile School’s pool of trainers. Since then, he has co-facilitated and given numerous trainings in Poland and even one in Lithuania. Meet Master Trainer Robert Cieślar!

“Street children are one of the world's most invisible populations. They are overlooked by governments, law and policymakers and many others in society. The Legal Atlas puts information about laws affecting street children directly into the hands of street children and their advocates. By gaining access to legal information, street children and homeless youth are put on the map so that every child can be treated fairly and with respect.” (Consortium for Street Children, 2019).

Heartbroken we have to bring you this unreal news. Yesterday July 19th our friend, colleague and volunteer coordinator Saskia Dieleman suddenly passed away.

Big news! We’re absolutely thrilled to announce the Tomorrowland Foundation has decided to collaborate with Mobile School in 2019. The foundation linked to one of world’s largest and most notable music festival supports projects boosting the self-esteem of children through creative expression.

2018 was a busy year! In this annual report, we are happy to highlight some of our realisations. Our business venture StreetwiZe sold services to 122 clients and made them all StreetwiZe companies. Our social venture Mobile School realised 24 field visits in 12 countries with over 100 training days and 38 days of street coaching impacting 190 street educators. Our volunteers were active, as usual, organising two big campaigns this year: the International Day for Street Children and #DuwMee. Finally, 2018 was also the year of the start-up of our Tech4Good venture, StreetSmart. Want to know more? Check out a selection of our projects in 2018 and see what we’ve been up to last year!

Several Mobile School partners across the globe are using their mobile schools to reach out to children and youngsters on the move. The partner organisation working with this target group closest to Belgium is Jugendamt Stadt Düsseldorf. We interviewed Martin Schlupkothen, the coordinator of the local mobile school project.

The past few weeks, Sri Lanka was all over the international news. The horrible terror attacks that struck the island nation on Easter Sunday left the entire world shocked and speechless. Despite schools being shut in the aftermath of the attack, Mobile School decided in close collaboration with our potential partner Child Action Lanka (CAL) to stick to our plan and to conduct a one-week exploration with the organization in Kelaniya, a suburb of the capital Colombo.

Every year we place four to five new mobile schools with local partners. Those mobile schools are produced by teachers and students of the Provincial Secondary School in Bilzen (PSSB). Sustainable materials are used to ensure the longest possible life and to survive the challenging situations on the street. Limeparts - Drooghmans has been sponsoring Mobile School for several years now by supplying the aluminum that is used to build the mobile schools. They also handle the processing of certain parts such as the chalk boards.

In this new Mobile School article series, we would like to briefly present our amazing local partner organisations that take out the mobile school multiple times per week to boost the self-esteem of street-connected youngsters. To start off this new series, we would like to introduce you to our partner... Yenege Tesfa.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the mobile school project in Thessaloniki. Happy birthday, ARSIS and PRAKSIS! For 8 years, our two local partners shared one mobile school to work with different target groups. In 2017, they applied for a second mobile school to increase their impact on the street by reaching out to more street-connected children and youngsters. In July of that same year the implementation training took place and in March 2019, a follow-up training was organised, to coach and reenergise the two local street work teams. What did ARSIS and PRAKSIS achieve after 10 years of working with a mobile school? Time for an interview with the local experts to find out.

The shoulders can’t always be tense, it’s necessary to let off steam now and again, take your foot off the pedal and that is why we have a great plan!