“If I’ll tell you all the things I love about her I’m going to cry.”
“And if she is going to cry, I’m going to cry.”

“I was a dancer on Michael Jackson’s Thriller tour in 1984. While we were on tour, my father who lived in England got a heart attack. I remember sitting in my dressing room crying when Michael came up to me. He asked me what happened and when I told him about my dad he immediately arranged a flight home for me so I could go see my dad.”

“For the past years I have been working with disabled children. Most of the children I work with have a mental age of a 2-year-old. Over the year I have learned to communicate with the kids in their own language. Many people don’t realize this but each disabled person has their own language. It’s a challenge but I try to learn each child’s language as best as I can. Every time it amazes me to see that despite of their limitations they still try to get their message across and even develop new skills. For example, one of the children recently sat on the toilet for a little while. Even though it might sound as if doesn’t make much of difference because the child will never be potty trained or go to the toilet independently, To them and to their parents it makes all the difference in the world.”

2/2 “My father is Dutch and my mother is from Suriname so I am a mix. In the past few years there have been a lot of debates about racism and many people are starting to speak out. For a long time, I wasn’t sure how to act in these discussions. Still I somehow felt that I needed to define my role within this new movement so I started to research the concept what it means to be an activist. I interviewed many activists and feminists. I became more aware of racism and I got more guts to speak out. For a while I would stand up whenever I would hear someone say something racist or sexist. I noticed that some people around me would take distance because of that. I sometimes would even go against my own father and I would point out the fact that he is a white man. Soon I also realized that it doesn’t work to drop little bombs everywhere I go. I realized I was losing nuance. I don’t want to look at my father as a ‘white man’, but as a person I don’t always agree with. I’m not only my skin colour either. Now I know that I can still be an activist and stand up for myself. I won’t be silent anymore, but but I don’t need to end up in a debate everywhere I go. Through my research I never really found an answer to what defines an activist but along the road I did find an activist within myself. ”

½ “I used to be an intern at a television network. Things were going really well and after two months we had our annual editors meeting. The editor in chief had prepared a presentation in which he summed up all the things the network had achieved that year. In the final slide of his presentation there was a caption that said: ’‘Diversity” and right underneath my name was written. When I saw my name up there I froze. I felt so ashamed and at the same time I wondered if they had just hired me because I was contributing to the diversity within the network and not because of my talent.“