KAB-LAB: Transition Lab to alleviate children’s poverty

KAB-LAB aims to mobilize individuals and parties to engage in the alleviation in children’s and family’s poverty in Leuven (Belgium). The goal of the Transition Lab is to trigger a movement, in order to establish a stable foundation that enables participation in society and development for families in poverty (especially families with children between 0 and 3 years of age).

The movement is built upon the network of local actors in the city itself and its connections to regional and national actors. This interplay between micro- and macro level is crucial for creating a learning environment around the KAB-LAB that increases the impact of the lab.

At KAB-LAB, shared future and action perspectives for sustainable children’s and family’s poverty alleviation are developed. DRIFT is guiding this process, by taking the family’s environment and Leuven’s local context as the starting point. Subsequently, we work together with the city of Leuven, partners and health and welfare organization OCMW-Leuven, to develop shared ownership for future challenges.

By implementing a transition perspective, DRIFT contributes to the understanding of the social exclusion of families as the symptom of an unsustainable system, which maintains the social inequality that is at the root of poverty in the Belgian society. With our expertise in organizing, facilitating and accelerating transitions, we offer the needed support to respond to both current challenges and the underlying mechanisms and processes.

The transition team consists of DRIFT, OCMW-Leuven and the City of Leuven. Together, we aim to employ the current momentum, rooted by the diverse discussions and policy shifts in the social domain.

By providing and securing a learning environment in the project, KAB-LAB exposes the fundamental and systemic challenges in the social domain and puts these challenges on the agenda in diverse publications and media.

Duration of the project

January 2016 until December 2018

Client(s)/ Commissioning party / Funder

OCMV-Leuven

Partners / Team

OCMV-Leuven & City of Leuven

DRIFT Team

Chris Roorda, Frank van Steenbergen