Branches of Collaboration
VIVES University of Applied Sciences
Widening the Lens of Social Work
Dr Edna Lamnteh and I were invited by VIVES to lead an inspiration workshop for Social Work students, drawing on Sankaa vzw’s Racism Unravelled research and methodology.
Together, we widened the lens beyond individual cases and traditional support services, asking what becomes visible when social workers also attend to the systems, policies and power relations shaping everyday need.
Through facilitated dialogue, embodied reflection and examples drawn from lived experience, students connected local situations to wider structural patterns. They explored how social work might respond not only through care and support, but also through advocacy, community organising and institutional change.
My role was to help bring the research into the room: connecting data with lived experiences, inviting thoughtful participation and creating space for students to recognise both the complexity of inequality and their capacity to act within it.
For Social Work programmes interested in bringing research, reflection and practice into closer conversation:
[→ Read Sankaa vzw’s Final Report ]
[→ Begin a conversation ]
Online community: breaking the myth of race & privilege
Breaking the myth, building the circle
Daria Nashat and I first connected through LinkedIn. When we later met in person, a steady friendship and mutual encouragement took root. From that connection grew the monthly R&P Circle: an online gathering for people questioning the prevailing stories about race and privilege in their everyday lives.
Together, we created a space where participants could speak honestly, listen with care and develop language for experiences that are often difficult to name. Through reflective prompts, shared resources and facilitated dialogue, the circle invited people to explore boundaries, responsibility and the small actions through which change becomes lived.
Over time, it became more than a monthly conversation. It grew into a community of practice where people felt less isolated, more resourced and better able to carry courageous conversations into their families, classrooms, teams and neighbourhoods.
My role included co-founding and co-facilitating the circle, shaping its reflective prompts and developing resources that helped move insight towards action.
Interested in creating a reflective space for deeper conversations within your campus, team or network?
[ → Begin a conversation ]
Avansa - Oost Brabant, Leuven
De Conversaties - listening where history still lives
Following renewed public debate around Belgium’s colonial past, De Conversaties brought seven participants together over six Saturdays to explore what remained unresolved, unspoken and present in everyday life.
Guided by Tiny Alaerts and Philsan Osman, we spoke from our different positions, listened across histories and power, and practised recognising pain without reducing one another to fixed roles. Even among participants with connections to Congo, our perspectives were not the same. They had been shaped by personal experience, inherited stories and the wider structures surrounding them.
My contribution was to enter the conversation fully: offering my own perspective, remaining curious about the experiences of others and helping hold the complexity that emerged between us.
Journalist and podcast maker Lisbet Gijsel carried these conversations into a public podcast series, creating a record for others seeking more thoughtful ways to approach colonial history, responsibility and repair.
For campuses, cities and cultural organisations interested in creating space for difficult histories to be met through sustained, multi-voiced dialogue:
[ → Listen to De Conversaties ]
[ → Begin a conversation ]
Artevelde Hogeschool/Ghent University
Bringing research into the therapy room
Through Sankaa vzw, Dr Evodia Uggi and I were invited to lead an inspiration workshop for Occupational Therapy students and educators, drawing on the research and methodology of Racism Unravelled.
We opened up not only the findings, but also how the research had been shaped, interpreted and brought into practice. Together, we examined how culture, power and bias can influence participation, assessment and the decisions made around care.
Through case mapping, embodied reflection and facilitated dialogue, students practised noticing what might otherwise remain unspoken, connecting individual experiences to wider structural patterns and considering more responsive approaches to therapeutic support.
My role was to help bring the research into the therapy room: connecting data with lived experiences, inviting reflective participation and creating space for students to strengthen both their professional judgement and their capacity to respond with clarity and care.
For Occupational Therapy and Social Work programmes interested in bringing research, reflection and practice into closer conversation:
[ → Read Sankaa vzw’s Final Report]
[ → Begin a conversation ]
De Toverhazelaar
Where Care Becomes Culture
A natural affinity with children, curiosity and care led me into part-time work at De Toverhazelaar, where I spent three years inside the daily life of a Flemish crèche.
As an Early Years Educator, I cared for babies and toddlers while contributing to child observation, communication with families, team reflection and the practical rhythms that hold a care environment together. The work continually revealed how culture is formed through ordinary moments: welcomes and separations, meals and rest, play and conflict, boundaries, reassurance and repair.
The crèche became both a demanding and magnificent learning ground. Its sensory and organisational intensity sharpened my attention to how adult capacity, cultural assumptions and institutional structures shape what children, families and colleagues experience.
This time now forms the ground beneath Ground Notes and continues to inform my Cultural Wellbeing Practice: noticing what often goes unspoken and asking how early care environments might become more responsive, dignified and alive.
For early-years teams interested in reflective dialogue around culture, communication, child guidance and the conditions of care:
[ → Read Ground Notes]
[→ Begin a conversation ]
Sankaa vzw
From Research to Repair
I joined Sankaa during the closing phase of Racism Unravelled, contributing to the Voices that Count process and the sensemaking workshops through which research findings were examined, interpreted and brought into conversation.
Working alongside Dr Evodia Uggi and Dr Edna Lamnteh, I supported end-phase data analysis, co-presentations and facilitated learning for Belgian universities and European and public-sector settings. These became spaces where participants could encounter the evidence, connect it with lived experience and give clearer language to institutional harm.
My contribution sat between analysis and facilitation: noticing patterns, connecting research with the realities beneath it, and helping shape learning that was reflective, practical and attentive to the people in the room.
This collaboration continues to influence how I bring research, dialogue and experience together, not simply to explain what has happened, but to help open more thoughtful possibilities for what might happen next.
Interested in bringing research into facilitated learning within your institution or programme?
[Begin a conversation →]