Draft:Koen Timmers

Koen Timmers is a former teacher. He currently is the director and co-founder of Take Action Global. In 2015 he launched the Kakuma Project in which he started to teach refugees through Skype. He asked other teachers globally to join the project and ended up 420 teachers across 75 countries. The project gave him insights how virtual interactions between refugees and students from across the world allows to fight polarization. This made him decide to launch the Climate Action Project. Currently Timmers is mostly working on climate education.

In 2018 Timmers was one of the 10 finalists of the Global Teacher Prize. In 2019 he was accepted to the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). In 2021 he delivered a TEDx talk "When education tastes sweeter than winning the lottery" at the University of Hasselt.

Timmers is the author of "Game Changer" and co-author of the book "Teaching in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Standing at the Precipice".

Timmers has delivered keynotes about climate education and the use of technology in education.

In 2023 Timmers became an Ashoka fellow.

Projects

 * 2015: Project Kakuma offering free education to thousands of refugees in Kakuma Refugee Camp  . The school has been called one of the 16 schools defining the future of education by World Economic Forum in 2020. . The project was featured in the documentary Heroes for the Planet from director Kief Davidson.
 * 2017: Climate Action Project. This free project unites 3.4 million teachers and students online across 149 countries. The purpose of the project is to bring climate education to schools to make students more knowledgeable about climate change and stimulate them to share solutions and actions online. The project is supported by WWF and UN Environment Programme.
 * 2019: Innovation Lab Schools. Timmers built 2 schools in Tanzania in partnership with Jane Goodall Institute. They were featured in Jane Goodall's documentary "The Hope".