in Há Nôi
The "Trading hats" project
There are many children outside of Holland that can speak Dutch, Many of which have parents that work there. Sometimes they move to another country after a few years. These kids that speak Dutch go to a Dutch school or a NTC school in a city where they live. There are about 250 Dutch teaching schools in foreign countries which are part of the foundation of Dutch Education in foreign countries, or Stichting Nederlands Onderwijs in het Buitenland (SNOB) in Dutch The foundation brings Dutch kids in other countries together. These kids know about many cultures and traditions because most of them lived in other countries. When Roby Bellemans saw this in 1989, while visiting a SNOB school in Sweden, he later got an idea about making an internet project: when you wear a foreign hat, it takes you to its country, and then you can just pass the hat on to another person. That is how the Project Trading hats was born.
And this is how it works:
The project started during the annual children's book week of 2009, the theme was "food". That is why we chose to work with recipes.
The children take a picture of themselves with a hat on (or they can photoshop the hat on), and write a recipe of the land that they live in. After that the children take a second picture without a hat, showing a recipe that they made up themselves. On the final and third photo of the children, they should be wearing a hat from a country where they have been or that they want to go to, with a written recipe from that country. They have to send their pictures and recipes to the editors of the project. The editors will get in contact with a child in that third country. The child that lives in that third country also takes pictures with different hats, finds recipes from 3 different countries and sends their information to the editors again. This is how the project develops further and all the Dutch-speaking children overseas get closer to each other.
Because all of the participating children started off their chains in Vietnam, in a while that would allow them to have a good view of where in the world there are Dutch Language Schools and Dutch-Speaking children. It continues like this until one of the children chooses Viet Nam as their third country, this is when the circle will be complete. This project is designed and made for kids by the kids of the Dutch School, "de Blauwe Lotus" in Há Nôi in Viet Nam. Roby came as a guest to the school to, together with the Dutch teacher Mr. Jan de Groot, start the project.
these are the children behind this project from the Dutch
School
THE BLUE LOTUS SCHOOL
the photos: Kevin
the website: Kim / Igor
the 'administration': Daan
international contacts: Melanie / Hanna
the logo: Meg
the newsletter: Lisa
under the watchful eye of: Jan de Groot
click on the logo to get the children's site
© Rebekka Keus/ Meg van Grinsven
