During the start-up training, various other organisations working with street-connected children were invited to catch a glimpse of the mobile school methodology. One of them was Hälsa International, an organisation that immediately showed great interest in adding the mobile school materials to their outreach interventions. At the beginning of June, the moment was finally there to launch our second mobile school in Togo our friends of Hälsa International.
At first, a collaboration between AGOPODE and Hälsa International was set up, but it was clear that from a logistical perspective this didn’t meet the needs of both organisations. Moreover, estimations show there are about 7,000 street-connected children in Togo – although as always, exact numbers are very difficult to obtain. About 3,000 of them would be living in the capital city Lomé. Therefore, it made perfect sense to start up discussions to provide a proper mobile school to Hälsa International so they could maximize the impact of their outreach work for street-connected children.
While our master trainer Bram Van de Putte and co-facilitator Marcel Fantodji – the local mobile school coordinator of AGOPODE – were training the team of Hälsa International in their office in Lomé, the mobile school will soon be transferred to the city of Dapaong, in the northern part of Togo. There, Hälsa International runs a joint education program with UNICEF to reach out to the many children who are roaming the streets due to the insecurity in the region, which is caused by neighboring countries such as Burkina Faso, where Islamist insurgents are trying to destabilize the country.
In Lomé, both the teams of Hälsa International and AGOPODE joined for 10 days of workshops, with the goal of making them experts in using the mobile school methodology on the streets. The group quickly picked up all the basic principles of working with the school, resulting in a fantastic, vibrant atmosphere during both the workshops and the first outreach sessions. Soon, the team will transfer this positive vibe together with the mobile school and the more than 260 educational materials to the region of the Savanes to start the outreach work there.
Check out some of the best pictures from the start-up in Togo below.
More info on our StreetSmart Wheels projects in Togo?
