Download the Apeldoorn project report

We invite you to read the Apeldoorn Project Report!


We see this report as a portfolio of our work. Filled with stories and ideas for change. 

It’s the product of spending more than 100 hours with women and sharing 17 Big Macs, 10 pizzas, and more fries than we’d care to count. From November 2013 until February 2014, we had the privilege of getting to know 16+ women living in a domestic violence shelter in Apeldoorn, The Netherlands. 

The project started with the question: How can we support more women to stand on their own two feet? Over many dinners and teas, we learned that standing up is not the same as moving forwards. Most of the women remain lonely, left out, and on the margins. Despite having up to 8 different professional services in their lives. This is the disconnect we want to do something about. Download the report to explore 20+ ideas we think could enable women to live interdependent, rather than independent, lives. 

We’re now sharing these ideas, and the process we used to develop them, with organizations. Our hunch is that the stories can help professionals to see women in new ways, and question the role of formal services & systems. We hope to build capacity to think and act differently. And over time create the conditions for moving from ideas to live prototypes.

Please get in touch if you’d like to explore how the stories of women, and the tools we used to capture the stories, could be used as part of professional development or service redesign.