In 2006, Mobile School set up its first Asian partnership in the Philippines with local organisation Virlanie Foundation. Almost 14 years later, this mobile school is still hitting the streets of Manila four times a week with the Mobile Unit team, with one major objective: boosting the self-esteem and discovering the talents of underpriviliged children in the capital of the Philippines.
Since the team of Virlanie is still going strong after all these years, Mobile School decided to organise a follow-up training for the street workers of Virlanie in February. Two social workers from Childhope - our other partner in Manila - joined the training to exchange experiences and to create new games adapted to the local context. The five pictures below tell the story of the one-week follow-up training that was conducted with the teams of our two partners in the Philippines.
Due to logistical issues with the shipment, the team of Virlanie only had a small selection of the Mobile School educational panels at their disposal. Our new panels on topics such as movement, sports, puberty, sexuality and conflict resolution were not yet available to the street educators. During the follow-up, Mobile School and Virlanie took the decision to print the missing panels locally so the team could use the mobile school to its full potential again!
Not only the new Mobile School panels boosted the morale of the team. Virlanie also pro-actively invested in the printing of the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) games, offered to our partners through our StreetSmart Play platform. These DIY-games are developed by different StreetwiZe clients during StreetwiZe expeditions in Belgium and Romania. Afterwards, our educational volunteers tweak these game prototypes in order to make them street proof and instantly playable for our partners!
The street educators of our partners are the local experts! That’s why Mobile School always conducts a creativity workshop with teams to co-create new games adapted to the specific needs of the local project. Here, the teams of Virlanie and Childhope are testing the newly designed Social Media Pie game, created to start up a discussion on the advantages and risks of social media.
After an intense couple of days full of workshops and co-creation, the team went out to the streets to put the theory into practice! On Thursday, the team took the mobile school out to Metropolitan, an area located closely to the office of the Virlanie Mobile Unit. Currently, the team takes the mobile school out four times a week to two different areas in Manila.
A girl trying out the newly locally printed Emoji Game! The new panels immediately proved their added value during the street session in Metropolitan. Now, the team of the Mobile School Unit has enough new resources to keep on creating high-quality, non-formal educational activities for children in street situations.
