LEAD is our local initiative set in public schools in Amsterdam, with a focus on the areas of the city with high populations of immigrant families. LEAD’s afterschool program emphasizes character development and everyday leadership skills through art-making. Take a look at the LEAD page for some great stories.

I hear that exclamation at least once a day from my 5 year old son which is one reason why I have been thinking a lot about our pillar of fairness. For him, things aren’t fair if they don’t go his way. Isn’t that what fairness is… a decision that benefits us? But, what about the other people that are involved, what is fair for them?
That’s the tricky part of fairness. It’s taking our own interests out of the equation. It’s looking at things as objectively as possible and making decisions based on facts. It’s following the rules even when we won’t win. It’s treating everyone as equally as possible. That kind of fairness is what we hope for in our communities, but that’s the kind of fairness that is the hardest to live out.
Each time I have to respond to “That’s not being fair,” I think about how my own actions and words model (or don’t model) fairness. It’s one thing to try to explain fairness to my son, but another to try to live it out in my daily interactions with him and with others.
How do you model fairness in your daily life? How do you respond to injustice?

Respect. 

I am in a thick of it too: making my 3D super hero – alter ego. I just love this project! It’s so fun but also pretty confronting – even for an adult. You go through such a deep process of thinking ‘who am I and what could I be, or what would I like to be, who and what do I really admire?

Respect is one of our 7 pillars which we rehearse, talk, analize, question, remind, model, encourage, (and sadly forget sometimes too) all the time at LEAD. Respect, this is a tough one! Yet, when making my own little super hero, I notice that it’s really, really valuable and important one for me. I so long to be someone whose behaviour is rooted in a deep respect for life; people (including myself, it is really hard to respect others without respecting yourself), earth, and God. In the end aren’t all of our super heros the ones that we respect greatly as persons?

We all want to be respected, (i.e. treated with respect/ value,) yet we cannot demand respect. So we need to learn to give first. Only then will we receive back – sometimes.

I still remember vividly one encounter with a child last year when the task was to draw a symbol of respect and this one girl sat still without lifting her pencil with a blanck sheet of paper before her. I gently approached her and asked what’s wrong. She was clearly frustrated by the assignment and said: ‘how could I know how respect looks like if I have never been shown respect to or treated with respect?’ She obviously felt deeply misunderstood and devalued at that moment. It is a great challenge for us who work with (or parent) children to show consistent genuine respect towards our children. Showing respect to a child doesn’t always look the same as showing respect to an adult, but often it doesn’t differ that radically as we often let ourselves believe. We need to become eager learners of this skill.

Respect (according to Oxford dictionary)

1 [mass noun] a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements.

2 due regard for the feelings, wishes, or rights of others.

Click on the image or here to read the entire article.

a snapshot of the student's work

Recognize this quote from Spiderman? It seems every month there is a new super hero movie out on the big screen. LEAD is taking advantage of this new surge in interest in super heros and having the students create their own. What kind of powers would they have? How would they use them to help others? How does a super hero show responsibility with his/her powers?

Responsibility is a big word and one that we all need to remember. It encompasses lots of action from self discipline, setting a good example, as well as choosing a positive attitude. As the students work on developing these heros, stories evolve and identities form as the imagination blends the desires of the students with the fantasy of being someone else…. even for just a little while.

… What if we could actually become the good hero we project? What would it look like to have the character qualities of our own hero? But when I think of being responsible, it doesn’t really sound all that exciting.

Being responsible sound kind of  boring, but when you are a super hero, it is essential. You can’t use your powers in a way that harms others ( that takes self discipline), you don’t want to see evil overcome others so you help (being proactive and caring), and just by how you are, you are setting an example for others ( inspring greatness). Framing responsibility in what it actually looks like makes it sound way more cool.

15 February the student’s super heros will be on display at Al Wafa: Harry Koningsbergerstraat 30 Amsterdam. Come on over and see what they have imagined and ask them how they will emulate this hero in their own life everyday.

This week I find myself thinking a lot about one of the seven character pillars that form the foundation of LEAD: caring.

Caring can be a very silent, gentle thing. But it can be also be a very argumentative, tough, and even stern thing. Caring is not necessarily always kind, at least not in the way we typically think of kindness, in that it can require a certain level of fighting and breaking down: breaking down walls of role playing and expectations and disappointments and so on. Caring requires a lot of honesty, a lot of foresight, and a whole lot of empathy. Caring often requires a big push — a push through the roles we blindly play in life, a push through established systems, behaviors or actions, a push through a false perception of another person, a push through the norm. Caring requires us to step outside of not only ourselves, but outside of much of what is accepted as ‘the way it is’. And then, on the other side of caring, things are no longer ‘just the way they are’: there’s action, there’s decision, there’s growth. There is transformation. Little bit by little bit, little caring push by little caring push, life begins to shift. People shift. Communities shift. A city shifts. The world shifts?

Interestingly, to step outside of ourselves — to show empathy — we often have to first journey deep into ourselves. Like a trek through some cave, in order to see what’s on that other side, to really care for another person, we’ve got to dig through the depths of ourselves. But there is another side, there’s not just an endless darkness.

Reckoning is called Reckoning specifically for this reason: caring is, actually, quite a challenge. It’s something you’ve got to take into account within yourself — between yourself and another person, between yourself and the world. To care, we’ve got to stand in the face of ‘the way it is’, stare it down and break through accepted beliefs about, for example, the way a certain student is maybe ‘just a bad student’, or the way a community is ‘just not integrating’. We have to see beyond the norms and have foresight about what’s on the other side. And we have to be willing to make the trek to find it.

This week I’m back in the States to care for my mother, a 56 year old woman who is right now like a frightened little girl. She is physically and mentally ill. Back over the Atlantic in my two-story apartment in Amsterdam with my busy life and all my own daily concerns, I’ve been avoiding caring for her for months. I’m talking about that kind of argumentative and tough and stern type of caring that involves an immense opening up of myself in order to really step into her shoes. I’ve been avoiding that big push. But it’s the push, it’s saying what many are afraid to say and it’s saying ‘I see you. I see into you beyond the roles we’re all playing and beyond the fear and the anger and the hurt. I see you. I care about you.’, that moves us towards transformation.

After sitting on the couch this morning crying with my mom, after hours of pushing, hours of caring, I’m thinking about caring for the 20 kids we’re working with for LEAD. And I’m thinking about how to push. How to care. How to transform. And I’m reminded of the importance of involving yourself, and in that the importance of commitment. A commitment to the other, a commitment to care enough to push through the tough stuff, and ultimately a commitment to the process of transformation. And the process is never done.

Leadership is often mentioned word within Reckoning. Even the project I am working with is called ‘LEAD’. I find the word ‘leadership’ (or leading, leader, lead) a pretty loaded word. The culture where I am working and living in does not favour this term. Either it is seen as an ambitious ‘don’t think too highly of yourself’-kind of word or a task, responsibility or a burden to be avoided. There are many associations that come to my mind when thinking leadership. Depending on our background they could be: power, control, authority, position, status, responsibility, servanthood, experience, wisdom, humility, guidance, being in charge… Both negative and positive. I have my own journey with this concept too. I come from a background where it would be too boastful to call yourself a leader, instead you would call yourself a ‘facilitator’, ‘guide’ or ‘assistant’. Having worked in several voluntary organisations and groups I find time after time how hard it is to find ‘leaders’, at least when people realise what leadership takes: hours of work, commitment, service, responsibility, (you are last one to mop the floor and get the blame when things go south). ‘Everything depends on leadership!’. But aren’t we all supposed to be leaders? This is what LEAD is getting at. To empower children to show qualities of a good leader in their everyday lives. Those who take initiative, serve, love, care, respect, speak up for the weaker, carry the consequences of their actions, take responsibility!

How do we in the society in general choose leaders? Who are our leaders? Those who have money, who know how to present themselves, who have right connections..? Just very reacently I was at serving at a gathering where various faith leaders gathered here in Amsterdam for an evening of fellowship. For a moment I was just enjoying watching the new relationships that were formed between different leaders. I said to a friend of my who stood next to me as an observation, ‘there are not very many women here’. He answered to me ‘well, I see quite a few, but zero children’. Without really thinking further, as a reflect I paraphrased a Bible Scripture to him from Isaiah 11:6 ‘The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.’

That was our conversation for the night. But I kept on thinking this. I was thinking how the room would look like if instead of those (mainly men between thirty and sixty years old) leaders there were children of all ages and nations, both girls and boys. What an upside down picture. I am not a Bible scholar but it is obvious that, that is precisely the point of the text. It is painting a picture of upside down earth. It is filled with logical impossibilities – in this world and time. It is talking about a different kind of reality, something that everyone realises is not possible now, but some dare to dream of for the future. In the world we live in children are not seen as leaders, they are weak, powerless, vulnarable, unexperienced and lack competence for a task of a leader. But what would happen if they were leaders? One day these children will grow up and they will be leaders. We can either stand aside passively and wonder, what kind of leaders will they become? (Will they give justice to those who have been opressed?) or we can help them to grow and become leaders now. Leadership is a complex art and happens in so many different levels. I feel like I have become in a way a student of leadership as I am training to be a better leader of myself and those around me who are watching – and following.

Do you feel like you are a leader? If so do you know who you are leading and where to? Or are you a leader by a title but rarely act like a one? What kind of leader do you dream to be or would like to see your children to be? …and who are you following? Who is your leader?

This autumn is a new season of life for me in so many ways: new city, new language, new
home, new job. All of it is exciting and wonderful, yet with so much newness, there are
days when it is all a little unnerving. So, how do I handle this time of change?
It all comes down to character. In times when things are changing and new or in times
when things are mundane and “normal” our true character comes through as we navigate
through all these aspects of life. But, how does our character develop? When and how do
we learn to make choices in our lives? Questions that are not so easy to answer, and
looking through the eyes of a teacher and also a parent, these are questions that I think
about often, not only in regards to how I live and the choices I make, but what about the
character that is developing in my own children, in the children that I have taught? This is
what excites me about this year.
I have joined Reckoning as a part of the design team for LEAD: A program that doesn’t just
question how character develops, but strives to be a part of the answer. I am excited to
join a team of people committed to investing in children and young adults and those who
work with them to begin the transformational process of becoming everyday leaders. I am
looking forward to meeting with the mentors for the program as well as the students
involved. As our team has begun planning, excitement for the start of LEAD grows.
So, how will I handle this season of change? Only time will tell, but a new season lends
itself to transformation, so I’m pretty sure that I will be changed and hopefully the students
and mentors participating in LEAD this year will be able to say the same.

There are many personal and professional parallels in my life right now. As we are about to launch our first bonafide year with LEAD, we are expanding into new territories: adding El Amien Basisschool which will have about thirty 10-12 year olds for LEAD in addition to the 15 we have at Al Wafa. Personally, I just found out on Saturday I am pregnant… this will be number 6 ( and maybe 7) for me. I can say both of these advancements are miracles.

Moving to Amsterdam six years ago, if someone would have told me I would quit my job, start up a non-profit during an economic crisis, get a Master’s degree,  and within two years have an amazing dedicated professional kick ass



team, get remarried ( I was widowed) and have another child…. these were all dreams I feared voicing. One of these accomplishments seemed far fetched back then, but to imagine all of them happening… dare I even hope?

Hope. This little four letter word means so much. This word gives courage. It sees opportunities. It brings light. It calms fears. It opens doors. This little word was all I had, and has kept me going when nothing seemed to be happening. Hope rids the mind of cynicism that mocks ones dreams and awakens fears. Hope shames ones doubts and unlocks desires. We all need it. We all want to believe there is something more, something better. We all Hope there is.

We live in a world of fear, hate, greed, corruption and self indulgence. We need leaders who have the internal character to stand with integrity and do the right thing no matter what the cost while treating all humans with respect and dignity. We need leaders who don’t fall prey to greed or self indulgence. We need leaders with good character and ethical  behavior. This is where our hope and the world’s needs meet: LEAD.

LEAD is about speaking into this hope with soon to be teenagers. Hope is where we start, but it isn’t where we end. Hope must be engaged. We must actively and intentionally move into the future we want. It is our guide but not our destination. LEAD will do this.

LEAD is designed to transform those who work with the students, as well as the students themselves. LEAD is serious about creating everyday leaders who do extraordinary things, exercising compassion with each decision. LEAD is dedicated to the role of art in this process. Art is self reflective. Art-making as done in our Reckoning Approach, is transformational in the character of the LEAD students.

LEAD also needs others to hope with us. Hope that we can all create a future we all want. It takes more than a nice feeling, or a good intention. It takes action. Please Join us and so many others who choose to hope and make decisions which engage hope.

Like our FB page. Subscribe to our newsletter, Forward this site to a friend. Donate financially. Contact us if you want to volunteer - even if you don’t live in Amsterdam, perhaps there is a way to engage your hope. See our Take Action link to engage each of these options.

When I was a teenager, art gave me a voice. Like so many miserable teenage girls, I used things like paint and photographs and Photoshop to visually articulate emotions, frustrations, desires, questions and (I’d even say) some wisdom that I had been shoving away, storing up in tightly-locked cases of “that’s not pure” and “that’s wrong” and “that’s too much” and “that’s not good enough or smart enough or cool enough or pretty enough or xyz enough.” I was indeed a sad and troubled young lady, but underneath all that, I was quite a scared and angry thing. But I didn’t know or I didn’t think I was allowed to be scared, and certainly not angry because…well, because angry was “too much” and angry would cause conflict and angry would upset people and angry could potentially bring all kinds of ghosts out of all kinds of closets.

Teenage angst. Plenty of us have been there, and I won’t trouble you further with this same-old-sad-teenage-girl story. But I will go back to that first line I wrote, which contained the idea of art and voice. Art as a vehicle for voice.

Now, some fifteen years or so beyond being that sad and secretly scared and angry teenage girl, I’ve in some manner of speaking become an Artist. I’ve practiced art and looked at art and studied art and made art and critiqued art and taught art and sold art and used art and been through/am going through about a gabillion love/hate relationships with art. I know art. And somehow, through the love/hate, art remains the primary vehicle for my own oh-so-often forgotten or mistrusted or self-conscious voice. It is very much the basis for how I encounter and understand the world.

Now, I’m “getting older”. I’m on the other side of 30 and I’m acutely aware of this idea of “getting older”. At 31, I’ve only managed to do about 1/16 of the things I imagined I could do by this time when I was still a budding little artist at Houghton College between the ages of 19-23. I’m not the famous artist I dreamed I’d be. I haven’t become the “next Sally Mann” or the “next Eva Hesse” or the next number of artists whose work I spent hours drooling over and taking into my consciousness, helping me come to deeper terms with what it meant to be human. I haven’t impacted people profoundly with my work. Heck, I don’t even keep up a disciplined studio art practice. I haven’t shown my own work in ages. I don’t go to museums often enough. I don’t do a lot of artsy things I “should”. I have, though, remained at the very least remotely engaged in the world of Contemporary art. And I have managed to grow increasingly irritated with the overall vibe and output I see in said Contemporary art world: shock shock shock and I’m more clever than him and I’m more clever than her and look at how clever this new tower of cardboard boxes is and are you serious with the piles of trash on the floor passing as artwork? and political political political! and globalization and how-is-the-internet-changing-the-way-we-communicate and blah blah blah — oh how the “messages” abound. I mean, don’t get me wrong: I get it. And on some level I do love it. I studied it and ate it up and and continue to study this stuff and eat it up and I try my little artsy hand at participating in the grand conversation. But then there’s the point where my eyes glaze over. I have to read the stupid text with the stupid pile of trash on the floor and my excitement secretly dies away (I never show this to the gallery curator, of course. I feign interest and understanding). My heart-strings are so rarely tugged. I leave museums and galleries and art blogs and conversations about art wondering, most of all, about whatever happened to a space for transcendence.

…………..

Transcendence is one of the seven pillars of character that form the basis of our educational approach for LEAD. The other six pillars are: trust, respect, caring, citizenship, responsibility and fairness. I think transcendence is (not so) secretly my favorite. It’s the one I personally connect with most and the one I think has most changed and formed my own life. But it’s probably also the most difficult one to tackle with our current target age of 10-12 year-olds.

Now, enter: Transcenda.

Transcenda is (apparently) my alter ego. I just developed her last week as a “test-run” for the first art project in our new session of LEAD. I’m cooking up a plan to have our groups of 10-12 year-olds develop alter egos and costumes for their alter egos as a way to explore the seven pillars of character as they’re exhibited (or lacking) in our individual selves. And then after the alter egos: duh duh duh! Self portraits. Drawing the vulnerable, exposed self — sans his or her alter ego costume with all its protective powers and bigger-than-life-ness. I think it has potential to be a great project.

So who is Transcenda?  Transcenda wears a black dress that’s covered in bright glowing stars and colorful, shimmery galaxies. Her dress has been transformed, as it were, by her numerous trips into outer space, where she has discovered and understood the “secrets of the universe”. She carries this wisdom with her, and it exudes from her in the most genuine and gentle of ways, bringing a sense of calm and safety to anyone in her presence. She surrounds herself with beauty, and she is a powerhouse of an artist — everything she creates is honest and communicates the mysteries and wisdom she holds deep inside. She carries a simple graphite pencil (symbolizing, of course, her brilliant little artistic self) and a palm-sized golden ball. When “activated”, the golden ball becomes a spacious and glorious cocoon — a safe-haven of a gathering-place. A space for everyone, with no divisions: no blacks or whites, no rights or wrongs, no goods or bads, no us and them, no xyz…just people exactly as they are in all their strangeness and difficulty and beauty. People safe. Transcenda is some kind of wise, artist, mother/Jesus-like, unconditionally-loving, all-understanding, middle-ground standing, safety and beauty-creating and all-embracing character that, above all, offers a silent kind of safe and beautiful energy in the universe. Wow, ryte?

And now enter the critical, clever, ironic character part of myself (and yourself): Transcenda is ridiculous.

Bash! There she goes. Bang! She can’t be. Boom! Something or someone so subtly beautiful and powerful can’t really exist. Kapow! You’re a stupid and silly dreamer for ever even going there.

Ground yourself you silly girl. You’re not that smart. You’re not that creative. You’re not that capable. You’re not that xyz. You’re not….you’re not…you’re not…

…………..

Ah, Transcenda. I guess Transcenda is some character I fancy I’d like to be. She’s the one, probably, who has done at least 3/4 or maybe all of those things that the 19-23 year-old budding college artist imagined she’d do by this other side of 30. She’s one of the characters, at least, that I’d like to be. There are others for sure. Some darker than Transcenda, some cooler than Transcenda, some more clever and intelligent than Transcenda. But last Wednesday afternoon as I brainstormed in my little notebook about what on earth my own alter ego might look like, as I fought my own resistance to creating and nearly choked on the tears of my own vulnerability and not-ever-really-snatched-up-dreams, and as lists of what Transcenda could do began to form, I felt particularly connected to her. I wanted to be her. I wished I could put on the galaxy-dipped dress I had sketched on the paper and become all those magical things she was.

And it hit me like some comet: all my fears and worries about inadequacy. All my concerns that I won’t be able to come up with projects that are strong enough to really get the message of LEAD across to our kids. All my big Ego-related crap about other people being better than me or smarter than me or more artistic than me or xyz than me. All my scared little girl-self flooded to the surface as I sat there making this alter ego. And I cried. And I thought, my god: this silly alter ego project is making me cry.

And I was reminded then and there of art as a vehicle for voice, as an entrance to the self. Art as an exposer of truth and vulnerability and beauty and the complex things in life that language can’t get a handle on articulating. Art as some sort of spaceship into strength and trust and transcendence, into what’s “above” or what’s “out there”. Into what we could be, what we could do, what we could think and make and love and honor as a human race. But also a spaceship smack dab into the middle of what is. What really and truly is in all its complexity and layers. Art as a place for understanding. For exploring. For questioning. For us.

For us.

…………..

As I enter my planning sessions for LEAD, as I try to gather-up and draw-upon all my artistic knowledge and all my experience working with kids and people in general, I’m struck (once again) by the sheer power of the artistic voice. I’m struck by its transformative power in my own life, in the lives of so many artists I’ve studied and admired, in the lives of my creative friends, colleagues, and family, and — probably most importantly  at this moment — in the lives of these kids we’re going to work with this year. I’m reminded to believe in, to harness, and to surrender, in a way, to this power. To trust in it as a real force that is “out there” and “in here”, and to claim it as my own, not just as an imagined power for Transcenda.

To me, LEAD is all about this artistic voice. It’s about giving kids and mentors a toolkit of sorts for their own creative voices, and through those voices, a space for perspective and a space for bridges between what we understand and what is foreign, what we recognize and what is a blurry abstraction, what is legible and what makes us feel illiterate, what makes us feel safe and what makes us feel threatened. It’s about creating that cocoon-of-a-safe-gathering space for people to express themselves — their hopes and fears and dreams — and it’s about trying to turn all that cosmic dusty stuff into a reality, into a solid form here on earth. Here in Holland. Here in Amsterdam. Here in Bos en Lommer, in Slotermeer, at Al Wafa, in the yet-to-be-determined other schools we’ll be working with, and in the eyes and hands and voices of those kids and of ourselves.

And so I grab my pencil and my palm-sized golden ball…