Visser’t Hooft Lyceum Leiden is a protestant christian secondary school in Leiden, Zuid-Holland. The school has around 1400 pupils, aged between 12 and 18. The school offers vmbo, havo, vwo and gymnasium education and has its own bilingual department for havo and vwo level. Our school offers Chinese as a modern language up to exam level. Furthermore we have a collaboration with the ministry of education of Spain, together we have set up a intensive language program for Spanish, Camino Español. The ministry provides us with a native speaker to teach these classes.

Visser’t Hooft is part of the tto-network. Internationalization is an integral and recognised part of the school and is considered as one of our pillars. Management, staff, students and parents are aware of this focus and Global Citizenship is an integral part of all our classes. Visser’t Hooft, conforms to the set requirements for tto This means that we have an extensive international program. In the past twelve years we have built a network consisting of schools in many countries; France, Germany, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Spain, Sweden, Italy, Finland and England. With some of these schools we have built an exchange program for pupils in year three. Other partners are a result of the former Comenius projects that our school participated in.

The international programs and projects are managed in the school organisation through a coordinator internationalization and the coordinator of the bilingual department. On a regular basis they take part in management and staff meetings. It is a school policy to have as many students and teachers take part in international projects as possible. Global Perspectives is an important subject for all our year four students. Next to these specific subjects the school tries to arrange an international project (e.g. Globaland, Cross your borders) in each year.

The particular motivation to participate in the Geo-Circle project derives from the positive experiences and relations from the Geo-Water project. We are very happy to be able to continue working with our ‘old’ partners and welcome the ‘new’ partners. Furthermore we would like to build upon the subject of sustainability and the circular economy as part of out Global Citizenship program.