Street Child United and the International Schools Partnership

The International Schools Partnership (ISP) has committed to supporting Street Child United’s (SCU) campaign for the rights and protection of street-connected young people for the next four years. The partnership with SCU will see ISP supporting and promoting SCU’s work through initiatives to raise awareness as well as organised fundraising activities across our regional offices and global group of schools.

Street Child United’s Visit to ISP’s London office with two of our former participants earlier year before the ‘ISP Schools Around the World’ challenge in May, was a significant day that has contributed to the reshaping of our Young Leader Programme for the next 12 months. When ISP staff met and heard the stories of Sadock from Tanzania and Sam from England, they were inspired. The SCUxISP Young Leader Programme was born and a plan of action to visit every ISP school around the world within six months was scheduled.

Five Young Leaders; Liya, Sam and Jasmin from the UK, Sadock from Tanzania and Denya from Bolivia, were identified as former participants who could speak on behalf of street-connected children and deliver sports sessions and classroom activities with the aim of raising awareness of the issues facing street-connected young people. To date, our three Young Leaders from the UK have visited eight of 10 schools in Spain: Laude San Pedro International College, Laude The Lady Elizabeth School, Laude Newton College, Laude The British School of Vila-Real, Laude El Altillo, The British School of Málaga, The British School of Almería and The International School of Andalucía, four schools in the USA: Kehoe-France Northshore, Kehoe-France Southshore, Baton Rouge International School and The Montessori Academy of Broward and Claremont School in the UK. We have further trips planned for Denya in South America and Sadock in Malaysia. The school visits not only benefit ISP students and staff who learn about our work and the events we host but help further the personal development of the Young Leaders, as they gain experience in public speaking, sports coaching, teaching and of course have the opportunity to travel.

Jasmin has already visited schools in Spain and the USA and is looking forward to visits to Mexico and Costa Rica in February. Her story from Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh to captaining Team England at the Street Child Cricket World Cup and being named in the BBC’s 100 inspiring and influential women of 2019 has already inspired hundreds of ISP students. She’s now introduced five schools to the sport of cricket when delivering PE sessions, hosted countless assemblies and classroom sessions, posed for dozens of selfies and signed hundreds of autographs. Needless to say, she’s greatly benefited from the trips and is now considering a career in coaching/teaching.

Sam and Liya have visited schools in Spain and are looking forward to their next trips. Sam is studying Multimedia Journalism at university and has created and delivered our football sessions within schools. She’s also putting together a poetry book with artwork designed by ISP students, whilst Liya is an aspiring Human Rights Lawyer who has gained a wealth of transferable experience from these visits.

ISP head office staff hope that these visits will encourage their schools to raise awareness and support, so we can continue our campaign for the rights and protection of street-connected young people. We are extremely grateful to have the support of the ISP central team who have also been raising money for us. A couple of weeks ago seven of the ISP team – Darren Mee, Bruno Ramos, Ericka Lee, Oana Birsan, Saffron Miller, Jo Pertwee and Emma Janes joined us for a sleepout fundraiser at Northamptonshire Cricket’s County Ground. Braving the -4°C temperatures, they raised an incredible £2,500!

The ISPxSCU partnership really is unique. Having over 40 ISP schools support and fundraise for us in March next year will be groundbreaking - we can’t wait to see some of the activities the schools are planning. The generosity of ISP has been truly overwhelming for a small charity like us and we’re really excited about the next couple of years as we develop our Young Leader Programme in partnership with ISP.