Over the past 15 years, issues around children and young people in a complex world have gripped me, and have not let go. What does it take for children and young people to grow up well? How do we organise the collaboration between all those organisations and professionals involved? And how do we learn together what works in the youth field, and why?

In short: learning and collaboration in the field of youth. As an inquisitive consultant, facilitator and editor, I support people and organisations to do this more and better.

I do this by providing insight into what works well and what could be done better, and why. For instance, by describing inspiring practices, and in particular the working mechanisms and principles. This could be about the collaboration between youth work and education, or about the governing role of municipalities in decentralised youth care. Or about the role of youth professionals in preventing radicalisation. I also use narrative research methods (Sprockler) to better understand, for instance, the impact and effects of policies or programmes.

I also bring people and organisations together, and facilitate mutual exchange and cooperation between different stakeholders. This creates space for new insights, approaches and solutions. These can be one-off meetings, and sometimes I coordinate long-term collaboration projects. For example, for the implementation of a European agenda to strengthen youth work in the Netherlands.

Thus, learning and collaboration often go hand in hand. Whether it is about collaborative learning, or learning to collaborate. I am happy to support organisations in this and give advice. For instance, for the collaborating Care and Safety Centres we explored the opportunities and possibilities of setting up learning network organisations around complex cases, for instance in preventing radicalisation.

Besides young people and the field of youth, the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa) is also close to my heart. A region where more than half of the population is under 30, and which faces complex challenges. I started learning Arabic to better understand the region. And also here I have seen the room for learning and collaboration, for example on youth policy and youth work in Morocco.

I do all of this out of a deep conviction: we can make better use of our collective knowledge, experience ánd imagination to address the complex issues of our time.

Expertise

• Youth
• Learning and collaborating in complexity
• Interviewing, writing and editing
• Narrative research
• Middle East and North Africa

Examples of what I do