Noël Slangen

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Noël Slangen

Who is Noël Slangen?

Noël Slangen (1965) is best known as our country's best-known communications consultant. However, he said goodbye to that job in 2012 with the sale of his communication companies. Nowadays, he is an opinion maker and columnist, such as weekly in Het Laatste Nieuws and Het Belang van Limburg. Out of love for his home province of Limburg, he became general director of POM Limburg, the organization responsible for the province's economic development, in 2020. Born into a fourth-world family himself, Noël Slangen is deeply concerned with rising child poverty. He recently succeeded child psychiatrist Peter Adriaenssens as chairman of the King Baudouin Foundation's Child Poverty Fund. He is also a board member of Hart voor Limburg.

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  • Child poverty, at the start, the race is half over

    In Flanders, 1 in 7 children is born into poverty. Child poverty has doubled in the last decade. In fact, 38,000 children in Flanders live in extreme deprivation, meaning they don't have a second pair of shoes that fit, can't celebrate birthdays, live in unheated housing, don't have access to the Internet or never eat fresh fruit or vegetables.
    A child growing up in poverty is already 2 months developmentally delayed by their first birthday. When we then know that 90% of brain development happens in the first five years of life, we understand where generational poverty comes from today. What is child poverty, and what can we do about it? That's what this lecture is about.