BASIC

-EQUATOR aims to amplify the voices of children and youth worldwide and bring them - across borders - directly into the classroom. After all, many teachers do not really know what is going on on the other side of the globe. Pupils should therefore exchange information about their own world.

-EQUATOR therefore creates contacts and twin schools (school links) between North and South and gives children and young people on both sides of the equator a broad view of the world. Through a secure platform, primary and secondary school students and youth groups share videos with each other under supervision. In this way they create learning opportunities together across the equator.

-We bring North and South closer together, building bridges between cultures and thus promoting respect, tolerance and world citizenship. We sensitize children and youth - and thereby also their parents, their immediate environment, organizations - about different living situations of children and youth in the rest of the world. Through active exchange of learning opportunities, we encourage engaged and equal relationships.

-EQUATOR calls on students and youth not just to speak their minds but to take action. This way, what they learn sticks and they grow into active global citizenship.

-Our project calls on schools and NGOs worldwide to get involved, with the support of municipalities, colleges, universities, NGOs and other professional partners. Our team of ambassadors travels the world in search of stories to share with our network.

 

Check out how we work with schools and how you can participate with your school in this video:

 

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

-Through collaboration with schools and organizations, young people bring forward their desires for a healthier, safer and more sustainable living environment.

-All themes of the United Nations' sustainable development goals are addressed.

-In this way, Equator contributes to a stronger development cooperation in which the strength of the requesting population is the starting point.

 

ENABLING COOPERATION

-Equator promotes twin-schools cooperation, in which Flemish schools and schools worldwide agree on how they can strengthen each other through various forms of exchange and contact through the films in which the students converse.

-Usually these films are also made available on the platform afterwards so that other children and young people can learn from them.

 

SUPPORT

-Equator supports initiatives of partners in the Global South through donations and fees it receives. This enables the realization of projects that are important for livelihood, employment, health, education etc....

-Examples include drilling a well, buying food in war zones, audio-visual equipment for classrooms, sanitation, vegetables in school gardens, breeding goats for self-sufficient rural groups, planting trees, etc....

-Some examples: basic aid to schools in Ethiopia, digitization to a school group in central Congo (DR), yam cultivation in Cameroon, sanitary installation in Cameroon, emergency aid to Goma....

 

INFORMATION AND AWARENESS

-It is both a mission and a challenge for the staff (mainly volunteers) of Equator to make Flemish people aware of contemporary aspects of development cooperation.

-It is time for decolonization, time for real cooperation in a model of equality and mutual appreciation.

-Through many avenues, Equator is treading the public path and increasingly trying to provide an example of its own for the motives it spreads.