De Donder started in entertainment as an amateur and performed with a puppet called Bibberlip. His breakthrough came in 1989 when he was asked to play the role of De Burgemeester (the mayor) in children's TV show Samson en Gert. Through this role he was able to become a professional actor. In 1997 he took on the role of the title character in the children's series Kabouter Plop, produced by Studio 100. His roles as De Burgemeester and Kabouter Plop made him a celebrity both in Belgium and in the Netherlands.[1]
He was a member of the cast of the satirical programme Brussel Nieuwsstraat[nl] ("Brussels News Street") that ran from 2000 to 2002. This programme also featured Koen Crucke, another veteran of Samson and Gert.
De Donder is active in the Flemish Christian Democrat party CD & V. In 2000 he was elected to Affligem local council in a coalition with N-VA, and he was reelected in the 2006 local elections. During party coalition talks, it was agreed that he would become mayor from 2011 and he took on this role on the first of January of that year.[2] He was re-elected as mayor in 2012 and 2018.[3] In 2019 he was an unsuccessful candidate in his party's leadership contest.[4]
Belgium comprises 581 municipalities, 300 of them grouped into five provinces in Flanders and 262 others in five provinces in Wallonia, while the remaining 19 are in the Brussels Capital Region, which is not divided in provinces. In most cases, the municipalities are the smallest administrative subdivisions of Belgium, but in municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, on the initiative of the local council, sub-municipal administrative entities with elected councils may be created. As such, only Antwerp, having over 500,000 inhabitants, became subdivided into nine districts. The Belgian arrondissements, an administrative level between province and municipality, or the lowest judicial level, are in English sometimes called districts as well.
The area within Belgium known as Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde encompasses the bilingual—French and Dutch—Brussels-Capital Region, which coincides with the arrondissement of Brussels-Capital and the surrounding Dutch-speaking area of Halle-Vilvoorde, which in turn coincides with the arrondissement of Halle-Vilvoorde. Halle-Vilvoorde contains several municipalities with language facilities, i.e. municipalities where French-speaking people form a considerable part of the population and therefore have special language rights. This area forms the judicial arrondissement of Brussels, which is the location of a tribunal of first instance, enterprise tribunal and a labour tribunal. It was reformed in July 2012, as part of the sixth Belgian state reform.
The Dutch Wikipage of Kabouter Plop
The Belgian provincial, municipal and district elections of 2006 took place on Sunday 8 October 2006. The electors have elected the municipal councillors of 589 cities and towns as well as the ten provincial councils. The voters in the town of Antwerp have also been able to vote for the city's district councils. In seven Flemish municipalities with a special language statute and in the Walloon municipality of Comines-Warneton the aldermen and the members of the OCMW/CPAS council have also been directly elected.
F.C. De Kampioenen is a long-running Flemish sitcom chronicling the (mis)adventures of a fictional local football team. It originally aired on the Belgian-Flemish channel TV1 between 1990 and 2011, for 21 seasons with 273 half-hour-long episodes, making it one of the most successful comedy programs ever on Belgian television.
Plopsaland De Panne is a theme park located in Adinkerke, Belgium - part of the municipality De Panne - owned and operated by Plopsa. The park reopened on 20 April 2000, before that the park was known as Meli Park from 1935 until 1999.
Studio 100 is a Belgian production company with four television channels, four animation studios and eight theme parks all over the world. The headquarters of the group is in Schelle, along with offices in Breda, Munich, Paris, New York, Sydney and Los Angeles.
The Francization of Brussels refers to the evolution, over the past two centuries, of this historically Dutch-speaking city into one where French has become the majority language and lingua franca. The main cause of this transition was the rapid, yet compulsory assimilation of the Flemish population, amplified by immigration from France and Wallonia.
Ann Van den Broeck is a Flemish actress and musical star. She ended her studies in 2000 at the Koninklijk Conservatorium of Brussels in the musical department.
Walter Baele is a Flemish cabaretier and actor, best known for creating characters.
Samson & Gert is a Flemish children's television series produced by Eline van Noppen, centered on the talking dog Samson and his owner Gert. In its entire run, the show was originally aired on TV1 from Christmas Day 1989 until 1 December 1997, where it moved to Ketnet and continues airing all of its episodes to this day.
Pol Goossen is a Flemish film and television actor. In 1982 he acted in the movie Het beest, and is known for playing the character of Frank Bomans in over 3200 episodes of the Belgium soap opera series Thuis, a role he acts since start of the series. He is a member of the professional theatre company Paljas Produkties.
Events in the year 2011 in Belgium.
Gert Tony Hubert Verhulst is a Belgian presenter, entrepreneur, singer, autodidact, director, actor, screenwriter, composer, film producer, millionaire & business magnate. As a prominent figure within the children's entertainment industry in the Benelux, he is regarded as a Flemish cultural icon, known for his influence and contributions to children's entertainment in the Benelux and founder of Studio 100.
Chris Cauwenberghs is a Flemish actor presently living in the Netherlands.
The Belgian provincial, municipal and district elections of 2018 took place on Sunday 14 October 2018. They are organised by the respective regions:
F.C. De Kampioenen is a Belgian comic strip created by Hec Leemans since 1997 and published by Standaard Uitgeverij. The comics series is based on the television sitcom comedy series of the same name on Flemish television. The series ran for 94 albums with numerous special versions and editions.
Plopsa is the theme park division of Studio 100, the company operates 8 (water) parks across Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany and Poland.
Vlaams-Brusselse Media, branded as BRUZZ is a media company which serves the Flemish Community in Brussels. Its counterpart to the French-speaking Community in Brussels is BX1. It is headquartered at Radio House in Ixelles.
Clara Cleymans is a Belgian actress and musical theatre singer.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
