Early this morning we reached the one million Global Native kids' threshold!
​The birth of triplets in Kopenhagen, Denmark, at 4 am today, June 25 2017, marked this historic moment. A longtime member family of four became a family of seven and switched our kids' number to a seven digit figure.

The three boys will of course be honorary members for life! We congratulate the proud parents and both sisters as well as the great Global Natives community of Denmark!
​Thank you so much for making us one million.

Learn more about facts and figures at Global Natives!

Please read the article here: 
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/02/how-being-bilingual-rewires-your-brain

The Guardian's article from this morning is more than worth a place of honour here:

"Studying abroad is a fun way to grow up. You travel. You meet new people. You get out of your comfort zone. It shows you’re willing to get out, leave your home town, and go see the world." ... please follow the link below for the full article!

www.theguardian.com/education/2016/dec/08/the-best-places-to-study-for-a-degree-in-europe

The outcome of Tuesday's election brought our servers to their limits. We have never before experienced such traffic from the United States. Wherever global minded people fear for their future reach beyond national borders they go looking for alternatives. Grassroot alternatives ... and how much more grassroot can you get than family to family?

We cordially welcome our new members!

Learning a familiar language seems a lot more attractive than learning a foreign one, right? 
Well, kids certainly feel this way. For them it means that crucial difference between wanting to know and having to learn, between "you can" and "you must".

So what does it take to become familiar with a language?
Very little, in fact. Here is what thousands of families do:
they start with rethinking their family holiday strategy.

Kids who will begin to learn French at school when they're ten could spend their first holiday in France at four or five. Not as mere tourists of course, but in close contact with a French family. Ideally with a family whose kids intend to learn their language!

Naturally they will only pick up a few words in the beginning, there is no rush and no pressure for results anyway. Familiarity is the goal: familiarity with the sounds and the melody of the language. Familiarity with the way people live, work and socialize, with the games kids play and the songs they sing, with the taste of their food and the fragrances of their gardens.

Synergy Parenting lets our families build longterm relationships, gives them the framework for short stays and for longer visits, for entire summers even, getting into the swing of each other's culture, language and lifestyle. A kid who has been to France a few times, who has enjoyed visits from the French partner family and has often listened to adults and other kids talk is more than ready to learn French in school, is eager to understand and speak himself and has no problems with pronounciation from the start.

The domino effect is tremendous. Familiarity with life in other countries increases the readiness to dive into other subjects too, geography and history lessons become more relevant, politics and global awareness take on a new meaning - even for ten year olds. 

Very popular: hosting teenage students for a language holiday who speak their language with your kids and your language with you. Thousands of our member families are raising kids who speak two, three or even more languages with no or hardly any accent. They're making the most of their kids' most formative years. 
They don't need a lot of money, just an open mind, curiosity and a genuine willingness to cooperate on a give-and-take basis.

Why is it so hard to find female superhero merchandise?
​In this passionate, sparkling talk, media studies scholar (and father of a Star Wars-obsessed daughter) Christopher Bell addresses the alarming lack of female superheroes in the toys and products marketed to kids — and what it means for how we teach them about the world.

For quite a few years now we had a workforce of mums and dads working from home. Almost entirely. 98%, to be precise. Until recently.

In April, James, our specialist for the legal stuff (immigration laws, visa regulations, etc.), became the happy father of twin boys and finally moved his workplace to his lovely home on the Irish West Coast. And in May, Donatella was born. 
James and Giovanna were the last remaining members on our team to become parents. Giovanna went back to work on Sept 1st, sharing the workload with her husband Pietro. The long awaited birth of their beautiful girl is a milestone in their life and it is a milestone for us too: for the first time our entire staff (of 96 as per today) is made up exclusively of actively parenting people, all working in and with their families.
We think we're unique.
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Yes, we strongly believe that we are the only organisation in the world doing a great job with an exclusive team of parents working from home. If we're mistaken we would love to know!
Please write to us if you know of similar setups and/or share your thoughts:

recruitaparent@globalnatives.org

Thank you!

We have just turned down our most recent take-over offer and we're doing fine.
But after seven years doing our thing, quietly growing and learning, we wonder:
​where the hell are all the others? 

A shop is just a shop. Many shops make a shopping street. That's the idea.
Year after year we were expecting inspiring competition to rise and shine, making the field of family-to-family cooperation more colourful and diverse. We always wanted a global shopping street full of opportunities, created by mutuality!

What we're aiming for is a movement, not a monopoly. 
Who's going to take up the challenge?

We believe that the finest asset of parents are other parents.
Like minded mums and dads whose haves and wants truly complement each other.
Kindred spirits who want opportunities and wider horizons and global competence.

And we know that our own rules will not suit everyone.

After all, we're into slow networking and careful consideration and we take quite some time for new members to get accredited. Not everyone's cup of tea, probably. But that's how we reach and move thousands of families. To reach and move millions, to serve the many aspects of young global thinking, to serve the multitude of families wanting to grow and learn together, there has to be competition.
To become a movement it takes a lot more ideas and drive.

Our experts think they know why there are no competitors yet. Because there is this public perception that there's a zillion mummy blogs and family networks on the internet anyway. And yes, there are many such networks and many of them offer great content. 

But if you've got three bright and eager kids and an average income, you may not want to chat - you may want results. Affordable opportunities, safe and practicable from your perspective, exciting and inspiring from your kids' point of view. DIY language holidays, student exchange, internships and more, based on family-to-family cooperation. For this you need identity, commitment, trustworthiness and an intelligent interface. And there's no other network offering just that. Yet. 
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We've both lived an exciting life with many ups and downs; we've experienced great successes and heartbreaking failures, we've known hunger and and enjoyed the finest in our time, we've been loved as often as rejected and we're still full of beans.
Ben and I are now in our early seventies. We are deeply grateful that we're blessed with excellent health, for our wonderful friendship of over five decades and for our amazing wives who've stood by us over all these years. As per today we are proud grandfathers of seventeen grandchildren - Ben has ten and I have seven - and they are all global citizens, just as we have always been.We want to invite kindred spirited grandparents to join us and we want young people who have no grandparents to let us know if we can help. Simply put, we'd like to open a Grandpas' Club for multi-generation Global Natives combined with true PhilanthroPals' spirit."

Ben and Geoffrey have hit the nerve of many families and their idea has already reached thousands within the network. We are deeply touched by the wealth of feedback we're getting and have just extended our "Gran Can Special" for grandparents for another year.

It was a great success in 2015 and we have a feeling, it will be an even greater success in 2016! Find out all about it here: Generation Pals.