mobile schools
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Mobile SchoolsTRANSCRIPT
This case was written by Professors Veroniek Collewaert and Jan Lepoutre, with the help of Angelina Stercken. This case is intended to be used as a basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation. The case was compiled from field research and archival material provided by Mobile School.
Copyright © 2012, Vlerick Business School, Belgium. No part of this publication may be copied, stored, transmitted, reproduced or distributed in any form or medium whatsoever without the permission of the copyright owner.
CASE 2012‐11‐C
Mobile School:
Bringing out the wisdom of the Street
Veroniek Collewaert
Jan Lepoutre
Angelina Stercken
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A: Meet Arnoud Arnoud Raskin still remembers his student project proposal defence to this day. Always an “inventor” and an out‐of‐the‐box thinker as a kid, studying Industrial Product Design had seemed right for him. And indeed, during his training as an industrial product designer, his teachers had talked about thinking outside of the box and making a difference. But when his fourth year’s in‐company internship forced him to think about marginal improvements for a post sorter machine among bored and boring colleagues, his heart sank – this didn’t resonate with the things he had been taught. When the time came to pick a dissertation project to conclude his studies, he decided to spend his last year actually practicing what his teachers had preached: to think outside of the box and to apply his creative thinking in a setting that could make a real difference.
When I was browsing through the final project titles, all the projects aimed to address some kind of ‘created opportunity’. But no matter how innovative a new hand mixer or a new baby seat might be, the objective is still to sell the product, even if people don’t really need a new or better one. And no offense to my colleagues designing products that are made to be thrown away after two years, but I thought: is that the impact I want to make?
Gradually, Arnoud realised that his role as an industrial product designer would not be about creating products for a commercial market, but rather catering to people’s primary needs. One day, as he was watching a TV programme on street children in Colombia, he finally knew what he wanted to do: he wanted to create a product that would serve street children in Colombia. With great enthusiasm, he explained to the project approval committee what he wanted to do. Much to his surprise, however, his idea was received with scepticism. The very same people that had taught him about out‐of‐the‐box and creative thinking deemed the project too risky, pointless for its lack of paying customers, and therefore not really the kind of project they were used to at all.
A man with a plan But there was no stopping Arnoud. He called an external professor he knew, and asked him to write a letter that would justify his project as a meaningful and conceptually sound endeavour. When he presented his proposal to the committee for a second time – now with the professor’s letter in his hand – they saw Arnoud’s determination and approved his project with the words: “Ok, if you think you know better than we do, go ahead. But don’t complain afterwards if you end up failing.”
The impossible had always attracted Arnoud – instead of discouraging him, it gave him the additional energy and determination to succeed. He started reading every book he could find in the library about street children. He read about street children and poverty, street children and AIDS, street children and drugs, … and he formed a very negative image of the life of the street child. Arnoud thought about the conditions of these street children and came up with an idea: to design a backpack that could be used both as a tent and as a raincoat, protecting them from
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the rain, giving them shelter, and providing them with a sack to carry their belongings in. Arnoud couldn’t wait to start working on the project! Through the TV programme on street children in Colombia, he was able to locate a social worker in Cartagena, Colombia, and decided to pitch his idea. But the social worker’s feedback made him mock himself – Arnoud had forgotten a fundamental rule about product development: before developing a product, understand the customer.
The guy said: ‘You clearly don’t have a lot of experience working with street children. I am pretty sure this idea would never work, because the children would just sell the backpack within 10 minutes to get some money to buy drugs.’
Back to the drawing board To get a better sense of the children’s needs, Arnoud decided to go to Colombia and work as a social worker out on the street. Without knowing any Spanish, he landed in Cartagena and joined the social workers he had seen on TV. Arnoud’s fieldwork showed him that street children are much more than the pitiful, homeless, dirty, malnourished, drug‐addicted and potentially violent pavement dwellers one typically sees on “donate now!” campaigns. Their ability to survive in the streets day after day, with seemingly nothing at all, showed their strength and self‐reliance. While some of them lived in the street full‐time and had practically lost touch with their families, others worked as shoe‐shine boys or candy sellers and went home at night. Most were between 7 and 18, and they often lived together as street families. Interestingly, only a few of these kids were abandoned children or orphans. Most of them had deliberately chosen to live on the street at some point in their life, due to a combination of circumstances, such as getting beaten up at home and the satisfaction and independence of earning money on the street. Arnoud also observed that most aid organisations working with street children failed to get them off the street: while they provided the children with shelter, food and education, 90% of them ran away within only days. Having cared for themselves for many years, and having lived according to their own or their gang’s rules, the sudden exposure to strict rules of living in a home with adults that tell them when to go to bed, what to do and not to do, made them seek an escape to the comfortable habitat of the streets, away from adults and societies that have only excluded or let them down again and again in the past. One day, while he was observing the street children and social workers, a street child sat down next to him and started asking questions in Spanish. As he didn’t understand what the child was saying, Arnoud asked the child to teach him Spanish. He drew a sun, and the child answered “el sol”. This went on for a couple of days, and he saw how the child was becoming more confident and proud as he was able to teach Arnoud to speak Spanish. Coincidentally, this fit perfectly with “the Pedagogy of the Oppressed1”, a book about pedagogical approaches he had been reading during his stay in Colombia. It was then that the concept of Mobile School was born.
1 The Pedagogy of the Oppressed is a theory developed by Paulo Freire that challenges traditional ex‐cathedra types of pedagogies. According to Freire, the traditional approach treats students as empty vessels to be filled with knowledge by teachers that act as colonizers of the students’ brains. Instead, he proposes a pedagogy where the learner co‐creates knowledge with the teacher.
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You know what the problem is? People in NGOs typically think that they will save street children by taking them off the street and putting them in some school. But that’s just not the kids’ habitat nor an environment that they trust. After a while, they get bored and just go back to the streets. What somebody should do is take the school to the children instead of the children to the school. We should work with what children already know and can do, and enable the children to leave the streets as a result of their own effort.
Based on these insights, Arnoud saw that the only way to sustainable reintegration went through street work with a long‐term focus: street work that reached the children in their own familiar environment, accepted them as they were, and used a step‐by step approach aimed at raising their self‐esteem until they were empowered to choose “a better future” themselves. Arnoud flew back to Belgium, filled with energy and eager to present his project to the school. After a year of prototyping and development, Arnoud came up with a first product. An extendable blackboard on wheels with integrated games and educational tools that could be taken as a “mobile school” to the street children (see Figure 1). It was a frustrating time because, while other students had only to design a small‐scale prototype, Arnoud had to build a full‐scale prototype. In addition to the €2500 investment this required, he had to spend most of his time looking for and ordering materials, rather than working on the actual concept and its functions. His project defence was difficult, with teachers giving him a hard time because the product was not fully developed. But thanks to his passionate defence and his understanding of both the strengths and weaknesses of his Mobile School prototype, he was awarded his degree in Industrial Product Design in June 1997.
Figure 1 ‐ Prototype of the mobile school
Moving forward After graduation, Arnoud couldn’t let go of his experiences in Colombia. Anonymous street children now had a face, a name, a history, and – for some – a future. He had developed a prototype that could potentially provide a path to that future. And maybe not only for the street children he had seen in Cartagena, Colombia. After all, he was an industrial product designer, a designer of products meant to be built on an industrial scale. So, while fellow students were scanning newspapers for jobs, Arnoud made a bold decision: he would go to Latin America to learn more about the realities of street children in that part of the world.
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After six months of travelling, Arnoud returned full of ideas and energy. He had learned much more about the street children’s needs, and he now knew how to improve his prototype to take it to Latin America. Some friends volunteered to help develop the Mobile School’s educational package, and a local technical school was willing to produce the mobile school as part of its students’ assignments. In the year that followed, Arnoud decided to first take a postgraduate programme in Culture and Development Studies before developing the Mobile School further with Ann Van Hellemont, a psychologist and one of his fellow students. A year after his graduation, the first two Mobile Schools were ready to be shipped to Latin America to face the test of the real ”project approval committee”: the street children. With a team of volunteers, Arnoud set off for Guatemala City, Guatemala, and El Alto, Bolivia, to test the Mobile Schools together with two local NGOs. After a year of working on the streets, it was clear that, despite some preliminary problems, the concept had huge potential. Spending half of the year in Belgium, working on developing new products and educational materials during the day and tending bar at night, he earned enough money to spend the next six months with street children in Latin America. Together with Ann and a number of volunteers, they developed an educational package that consisted of four categories of materials that could be attached to the mobile school. They also continued to work with the Gemeentelijke Secundaire School Munsterbilzen (GSM) in Belgium to produce the mobile schools. According to Arnoud, students at a “technical municipal school” are often viewed as inferior to students from other types of secondary school in Belgium, although these technical schools are simply meant to provide a more practical and technical focus on education in contrast to other schools. Indeed, students attending this type of school often lack self‐esteem and frequently skip classes to hang out on the street, inviting some comparison with street kids. What is special about GSM is that it collaborates with actual companies to provide students with first‐hand knowledge and experience on current technology. In this context, GSM chose the production of mobile schools as a project for its students to support their technical training, to develop their entrepreneurial skills, and to enable them to gain cross‐cultural awareness. According to GSM’s teachers, students enjoy working on the mobile schools so much that they skip school less often and sometimes even decide to work on the project in their free time. By 2002, however, Arnoud and his teammates realised they could not live forever on volunteers and the willingness of a local school to produce the Mobile Schools. In addition, they ran into a number of legal problems, as spending 6 years on‐and‐off abroad as a volunteer made tax officials suspicious and excluded him from receiving medical benefits when he was ill. It dawned on Arnoud that Mobile School needed to become an official organisation with a proper source of income so that salaries could be paid. Arnoud and Ann decided to establish Mobile School as a not‐for‐profit organisation and started shopping around for funding. One of the first things they considered was to become an NGO and request government subsidies. They learned, however, that to be recognised as an official NGO they needed a long track record as a formal NGO, with well‐documented project results and proven project management skills. Thus, with only a couple of weeks of formal existence behind them, the odds for receiving such recognition were very small. So Arnoud turned to the private sector. During their first years on the streets in Guatemala and Bolivia, Arnoud had attracted some media attention which had helped him get in touch with
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some supportive people and funding. Leveraging this media attention, Arnoud asked a number of philanthropists and corporate CSR departments if they would be willing to sponsor his project. While most organisations turned down his request, some offered to sponsor him on the condition that he would set up mobile schools in the areas in which they were active. Yet, while most of these organisations wanted merely to finance the mobile schools, Arnoud was really looking for money to build a more professional infrastructure so that his organisation could support the mobile schools. Through the board they had set up, Arnoud learned about Solid, a venture philanthropy organisation that invested about €1.5 million each year in development projects and was potentially interested in Mobile School. After a first meeting, Solid asked Arnoud to make a 5‐year business plan that would enable him to finance the professional structure he envisioned. Thrilled by the positive response, Arnoud and Ann worked day and night to prepare a business plan that ended up asking for €276,000 a year. This money would allow the organisation to cover its overhead costs: renting a headquarters in Leuven, Belgium, and paying the salaries of 5 full‐time employees for a period of 5 years. Much to their delight, they received a phone call one week later with the good news.
I remember picking up the phone and hearing the venture philanthropist say that they would do it. So I asked, “What part?” “Well, the €276,000 a year you requested. We’re going to do it.” I spent the next three days constantly saying “Oh my...”
B: Mobile, and gearing up
With the new funds, Arnoud was able to focus again on the development of Mobile School and to get back to his passion: helping children on the streets. Between 2002 and 2007, Mobile School shipped Mobile Schools to Colombia, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Peru, but also to Cambodia, the Philippines, Tanzania and Kenya. Yet, instead of working with the Mobile Schools in each of these locations themselves, Mobile School’s core team concentrated on the R&D of new game‐educational materials and methods, coordinating with the Secondary School in Munsterbilzen for the production of Mobile School products, and delivering them to street work organisations abroad. But Arnoud and his team members were very selective in the street work organisations they worked with:
“We don’t look for partnerships ourselves, because we know that, if we offer the material for free, all NGOs would want a Mobile School. Often in development work, NGOs tend to take anything that European NGOs offer. That would result in quantity – lots of Mobile Schools out there – but not a lot of quality: that is, better social workers helping street children build their self‐esteem. Because a lot of NGOs are not motivated enough to be able to manage the schools. A Mobile School is a gift, but it is also a responsibility: you receive a tool to optimise the time you spend on the street. So we don’t go and look for projects ourselves, we basically just sit and wait. And there are plenty that do get to us, because international cooperation on street kids is a small world.”
Screening the organisations was based on 3 criteria:
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the target group – does the organisation focus on street children?
the logistics – are their plans technically and financially feasible? and
the motivation – is the partner organisation motivated to make the Mobile School a success?
This screening was very important to Arnoud, because every Mobile School costs about €10,000 to implement. Flying two trainers to the local partner organisation to train the local social workers, shipping the Mobile School, and constructing the Mobile School itself were significant investments that he wanted to make only if they could lead to real impact and change. But “business” was going well: street children were being helped, differences were being made. Every year, about 3 new schools were opened, and about 2,200 contacts were made with street children per year per school. Still, at the same time, Arnoud started hearing a nagging voice in his head. The voice had actually started up the very moment he had received the positive news from Solid, the venture philanthropy firm:
“Here I was with Mobile School being a successful organisation. But all of its success depended on the funds that we received from a venture philanthropist – meanwhile, we were teaching the street children not to depend on others, to create their own futures, and to be self‐dependent. And here was Mobile School doing exactly the opposite: depending on other people’s generosity. That was simply not right.”
In the beginning of 2007, the venture philanthropist offered to renew the 5‐year contract, happy as they were with the results Arnoud had achieved. But Arnoud felt that it was time to change Mobile School’s business model once more. If Mobile School was to be successful over the longer term, he thought, it had to be able to secure its own revenues. But how?
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C: Landing with impact In January 2012, Arnoud Raskin and Ann van Hellemont sat together at the conference table of their cosy office in Leuven, Belgium. Pictures of several street children from around the world adorned the office walls, watching them with expressive faces full of determination, potential and positive energy. Over the last 6 years, Mobile School had evolved into a hybrid type of organisation, with several business units that worked together to achieve its objectives.
The Mobile School Group (MSG) now consisted of three branches: Mobile School Outreach (MSO), Mobile School Awareness (MSA), and Streetwize.
Mobile School Outreach The Outreach activities constitute the core of the Mobile School Group and revolve around the mobile school product, the continuous research and development of new game‐educational materials and methods, the production of mobile schools, and the provision of the mobile school tools along with training for street work organisations abroad (see Exhibit 1 for Mobile School Outreach’s vision statement). Instead of engaging in social work itself, Mobile School Outreach continued to build selected partnerships with street work organisations that indicated a willingness and need to integrate the Mobile School tools and methodology into their own knowledge and experience of street education. Despite receiving criticism for not growing fast enough, Mobile School refrained from advertising its methods to potential
partner organisations – instead, it awaited requests from the street work organisations themselves. Today, since only 2 employees work for Mobile School Outreach, the support of a large network of around 200 volunteers is crucial, both for R&D activities and for providing training to street work organisations abroad. At the end of 2011, MSG was working with 32 partners in 20 different countries throughout Latin America, Africa, Asia and Europe. This arrangement enabled it to make an average of 2,700 therapeutic contacts with children per partner project per year (see Exhibits 2 and 3).
A short history of Mobile School Mobile School started in 1996 with Arnoud’s decision to invent an unconventional product to complete his studies in Industrial Design. Realising that 90% of the street children who are brought to homes and institutions run away within two days, he designed a product that promised to help them in a more sustainable manner: building on their strengths, with the ultimate goal of increasing their self‐esteem. The “mobile school” is a box on wheels that can be pulled through the streets, on sidewalks and through doors, to reach the children where they live or work, e.g. the marketplace or the park. Today, it comes with 300 magnetic, educational materials (software) that can be attached to the mobile school. These materials are geared specifically towards the street children’s living conditions and provide opportunities for street educators to work with the kids in a playful but educational manner.
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Mobile School Awareness Alongside working with underprivileged street children through its Outreach activities, Mobile School also wanted to work with children and adults in the Western world. The main objective was to change society’s predominantly negative stereotypes of street children, and to bring a more nuanced image that also includes their capabilities and strengths. Since 2002, Mobile School Awareness has been engaged in awareness‐raising activities, workshops and lectures at schools and universities, service clubs and civil society organisations. While some of these institutions paid Mobile School a fixed fee for these workshops, the majority set up an entrepreneurial event to raise money for street children. Arnoud and his team thought this approach was very much in line with their objectives, as it used the same approach as with street children: let children leverage their own entrepreneurial strengths to achieve a challenging objective. Mobile School was very focused on delivering its awareness‐raising messages in innovative ways: even though they used more traditional methods like quarterly newsletters, or communicating through social media, they also developed computer games and organised an annual event to draw the attention of the general public to the reality of the street child. For example, in 2011, Mobile School was able to mobilise 5,000 people in only 2 weeks on a Facebook page to plead for an International Day for street children. Then, on the night of 11 April 2011, all of the participants’ names were written in chalk on a big square in the centre of Leuven. This earned them a centrefold picture in the largest newspaper the next morning – for free. Like MS Outreach, MS Awareness counts on the helpful hands of many volunteers to organise its events and activities.
The Street Chalk Action in 2011
Streetwize: Innovating towards sustainability
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One of the Mobile School Group’s main problems was that most of the resources that were collected through Mobile School Awareness or outside sponsoring were raised with the purpose of constructing and deploying the Mobile Schools, and, except for Solid International’s annual 5‐year donation of €276,000, nobody had been willing to invest in the development of Mobile School as a group itself. In 2007, with the objective of finding a self‐sustaining business model, the team decided to found the social for‐profit company Streetwize. Streetwize (SWZ) provides leadership and business training programmes that are grounded in the reality of the street child. As street children live in a risky and socially hostile environment, with almost no financial resources, they must be proactive and open‐minded, yet innovative and opportunity‐seeking to survive in the streets day after day. They cannot allow themselves to be beaten, they must get up and try again when they fail, and they have to work in teams to ensure survival. Arnoud and his teammates believed that the experience they had gained from living on the streets with the street kids themselves provided stories and insights that would also be useful to business managers in the developed world, who are faced with chaotic challenges, uncertainty and a lack of resources. From this insight, Streetwize developed a number of products – including 70‐minute inspirational sessions up to 4‐day workshops – devoted to learning street skills. Arnoud was aware that, as a by‐product, he was also again investing in a more nuanced picture of street children. All of the profits made by Streetwize are reinvested in the street children through Mobile School’s Outreach and Awareness activities2. Arnoud and Ann were happy to see a self‐sustaining model of their social enterprise emerging. While the personal stories from the streets collected in Mobile School helped Streetwize gain credibility and uniqueness in its product offering, the Streetwize revenues helped sustain Mobile School as an organisation. In addition to this virtuous circle at the level of street children in general, an additional virtuous circle was created for some very specific street children. Consider Junieth, for example, a Nicaraguan street child who grew up selling coconut candies on the street in the morning and evening, while going to school during the day and studying at night. Her story proved to be so inspirational that Arnoud decided to feature her in movies that were targeted to companies in which Streetwize was running a programme. Junieth, who by that time had turned 18 years old, would then ask the executives to solve a particular challenge that she was facing. In return, Streetwize financed Junieth’s university training at the University of Managua where she had enrolled. In 2011, 50% of MSG’s operating costs were covered by Streetwize; the rest was still covered by private donations and fundraising enabled through Mobile School Awareness. Forecasts for 2012 indicated that Streetwize would be able to sustain 100% of MSG’s operations for the first time.
And now what? Sitting at their conference table, Ann and Arnoud thought back on the tremendous growth the Mobile School Group had experienced over the last several years. Nevertheless, the two founders were even more interested in MSG’s social impact. With increasing competition from other social ventures aimed at helping street children, it was becoming more and more
2 Watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3vgTqjzKlI&feature=relmfu and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs54O9dY4U8 for a full explanation by Arnoud himself.
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important to know whether or not they were really making a difference and, if so, were they doing it efficiently. Considering the wide range of activities and stakeholders involved, the task of measuring their social impact seemed complex and daunting. What was the best method for doing this? And what were the benefits and pitfalls of different methods?
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Exhibit 1: Mobile School Outreach Vision Statement
“The Mobile School takes the position that every growth or improvement process of the street child begins in the streets. The Mobile School states that the only sustainable way to step into the growth process starts with recognising the child and its environment as central actors in the process. Everything begins with the constructive empowerment process without condemning or judging the child and its environment. Essential in the Mobile School vision is that the street educator plays a merely guiding role and recognises the child as the one that takes decisions and makes choices. He uses a positive and respectful approach in order to make the child realise it has these choices and is capable of making them. Only when the child makes the conscious decision or choice for change itself, will there be any chance that the change may be sustainable. In our urge to problem‐solve quickly, we easily resume fast rehabilitation strategies and forced reintegration work. Street educators and social workers often make fast decisions for the children without listening to the children’s needs. Too often street work turns out to be nothing more than a way to recruit street children for homes and institutions. In reality, however, street children that have been recruited in this way run away and again choose for the streets within days of being confronted with the structures of these institutions. The Mobile School states that every organisation that works with street children should be present on the streets. The street work of these organisations must be a complete and well‐founded programme with its own concrete objectives to achieve on the streets. The self esteem of the child is at the centre of the Mobile School approach. The child first has to believe in itself to be able to make lasting choices. Most children are psychologically scarred because of the experiences in their past (poverty, abuse, violence, drugs). Aside from attachment and learning disorders, the self‐esteem of the child is often severely damaged. All of this has led the children to build up an arsenal of psychological instinctive self‐defence strategies. Nevertheless, the Mobile School streetwork focuses on influencing the pure self‐esteem of the child. With a non‐judgmental and constructive approach, the children are offered a chance to reflect on their identity and situation in a positive environment. This way, the children can place themselves in their environment. The core objective of streetwork for the Mobile School is the growth of self‐esteem. By realising growth in self‐esteem, we cause three dynamics to happen. 1. HUMANISING THE STREET LIFE. One speaks of hundreds of millions of children that have to survive on the streets. To a lot of those children, the street is and will remain their sole and therefore best option. This may not be a reason not to invest in them. With an approach that is not merely focused on getting the children off the streets and into institutions, we can make sure these children benefit from our presence in their life on the streets, and are not excluded all over again. Raising their self‐esteem humanises the life on the streets a little. Their social skills are enhanced, which makes it easier for the children to connect to society from their own street reality. Aggression, violence, etc. can decrease because of this. Survival becomes easier and the quality of their life on the streets increases. 2. PREVENTION WORK. The shoe shiner and newspaper seller spend a lot of their time on the streets. The street therefore becomes an important educational environment for these children. This brings along a lot of risks. The self‐esteem of these children is stimulated by a non‐judgmental and constructive interaction during street work. It keeps them cautious and makes them more
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aware of the risks and consequences of certain choices. This helps diminish the chances that they sink any deeper into the street culture. 3. PREPARATION FOR SUSTAINABLE REINTEGRATION. The reintegration process of a street child may not be underestimated. It takes a lot of courage and will power to leave behind your familiar surroundings and choose for an environment you distrust. Due to the exclusion on the streets, the approach of “taking matters into your own hands” became essential to survive. The reintegration process now asks them to put a substantial part of their fate in the hands of often unknown social workers and educators. The difficult and hard road to reintegration begins with a conscious, well‐considered choice to enter into this battle. A strong self‐esteem, intrinsic motivation and determination are required to do this. Reintegration starts with well‐founded streetwork, independent of the reintegration objective, but with the focus on self‐esteem.” Source: Mobile School
Exhibit 2: Partner projects worldwide (in October 2011)
Source: Mobile School website
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Exhibit 3: Statistics on International Partner Cooperation 2010
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
4000
Latin America Africa Asia Europe Worldwide
A. Average number of contacts with children achieved per mobile school & project in 2010
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Latin America Africa Asia Europe Worldwide
B. Age variation between continents
<7 7 till 12 13 till 18 18+
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Source: Mobile School ‐ these statistics are based on the evaluation reports that 17 out of (at that time) 29 partner organisations sent in up to 1 February 2011. 1 In Europe, this distinction makes less sense: the street children stem mostly from poor families and spend a lot of time in the street because they are neglected and not motivated to go to school.
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Latin America Africa Asia Europe Worldwide
C. Gender variation between continents
Boys Girls
0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%
100%
Latin America Africa Asia Worldwide
D. Target group variation between continents1
Children from the street Working children Street families Children from "slums"
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