Article table of contents
In short
Mobile School is a Belgian foundation that provides portable schools for street children. Instead of taking homeless children and placing them in an institutional setting, the Mobile School reaches out to children in their own environment. Until now, all experiences have been based in Latin America. But some mobile schools could start in Africa too.
The mobile school
A mobile school cartThe mobile school is a series of 5 connected boxes that can slide in and out of each other via a telescopic system. The entirety was built on a base with four wheels, which allows the street workers to easily bring their school around town with them. They just pull the box on wheels behind them.
When they come across a group of children on the pavement or on a town square they just slide the boxes open. The box that is initially one and a half meters long becomes six meters long.
The sides of the boxes consist entirely of blackboard, to which the street workers can attach all kinds of exercise cards. Each street school comes with a package of approximately 200 exercise cards containing a diversity of exercises, all of different levels of difficulty which are color-coded.
The exercise cards contain a broad range of educational material that was compiled in accordance with the needs of the street. Thanks to the broad range of cards, the street workers are able to replace them regularly.
Available courseworks
The educational package of the school was developed and evaluated together with the street workers and the street population. It was entirely adapted to their reality, their problems and needs. At the moment, the educational package focuses on four main themes: literacy, creative therapy, health education and human rights.