let me take you back to August 2015
we’re in the middle of what has been
called though I’m not sure the
terminology is correct the year of the
European refugee crisis and I just
traveled through Jordan where I worked
with Syrian refugee children over the
summer you should probably know that as
an undergraduate student I focused on
the Middle East so traveling to Jordan
was a way for me to learn more about the
culture and improve my Arabic and when I
returned to the Netherlands I couldn’t
help but feel very uneasy and although
and you’d had to do something with the
experiences I had made in Jordan and
with the crisis I couldn’t quite
pinpoint what it was they caused this
feeling and as the days went on so did
the discussions on the refugee crisis
amongst the student body and in the
media and I often felt out of place
which you see for me is rather odd
because usually I like to pitch my ideas
on about everything but this time I felt
as if I had no contributions to make and
then I slowly realized what had happened
I felt trapped trapped in a loop of
reading the same stories and the same
newspapers arguing the same things close
our borders no open our borders refugees
are an economic burden refugees are
great for the economy and all the rest
of it and in all these discussions I
felt as if I had no frame of reference
because you see we talked about borders
but frankly the kind of borders that I
knew were usually invisible to me most
often than not there would be a few
kilometers below the ground as I was
flying above them sipping my tomato
juice on an airplane and a few
meaningful injections I’d made with
refugees for those few weeks I’d spend
in Jordan so it felt wrong for me to
just talk about in judge people’s lives
my didn’t know that much about which in
turn made me realize that I had to break
out of this echo chamber that surrounded
me and actually start listening and what
I want to share with you today is the
journey that followed this decision a me
a journey during which I would smile
across nine borders cover over 3600
kilometers and visit 13 refugee camps
across
Europe a journey which fundamentally
changed the way I approach thinking not
just about the refugee crisis but my
position in debates around these
difficult events more generally so after
this period of feeling trapped in an
echo chamber I started to brainstorm
what I could do and do you know this
feeling when you brainstorm day in and
day out about this one problem or
assignment you must complete and just
before you go crazy you eventually
figure it out and so you to relief well
this was nothing like it in fact all I
had come up with was rather a vague
probably somewhat naive idea to travel
across Europe and to use a bicycle
because at the time that seemed like an
appropriate way to really feel the
distance out cover
and after this flash of inspiration I
pitched this idea to my good friend
Florian and to my own surprise
immediately said all right when do we
start and with that the next chapter
began together with Florian and I like
to call this chapter engagement not just
engagement form of engaging with
possible sponsors for equipment and
contacts and different locations and
refugee camps across Europe but also
engagement because the countless
meetings the discussions the setting up
of a bank account together with Florian
it’s sort of how I imagine feels like
when you’re about to get married moving
forward to May 2016 after a few months
of intense preparation and networking
fell journey Lauren and I moved in
together as engaged people do and we
slowly prepare ourselves mentally to
spend a whole summer mostly in a pretty
intimate small tent together and then
finally on June 6th we set out on our
journey in front of the Peace Palace
here in the beautiful city of The Hague
and we were on the road little did we
know though that over the course of the
next 10 weeks how much would happen that
we produce over 80 hours of video
footage now let me break down those ten
weeks into ten minutes for you and share
with you how I overcame this uneasy
feeling of being trapped in an echo
chamber and the answer is quite
straightforward PDF
and with that I don’t mean the kind of
PDF that you export your Word files into
but I mean this PDF this tennis ball
represents three ideas perspective
distance and frame of reference now what
do I mean with that well first of all
you should know this tennis ball isn’t
just normal tennis ball if you look at
the photo behind me you can see that
fern and I had tennis balls attached to
our handlebars and we did that because
as we started to cycle we fairly quickly
realized that our wrists would start to
hurt we just couldn’t you know get a
good grip on those handlebars so we cut
a hole in these tennis balls attach them
to the handlebars and it made this
difficult experience of cycling longer
distances much more easy to deal with
more digestible and you can think of PDF
in the same way as it is a tool that
makes something we find difficult more
easy to deal with more digestible and
today I want to throw you this tennis
ball let’s talk about perspective first
you see the first refugee camp learn and
I visit a was called lolly near in North
and France where we had a contact with
the organization running in the kitchen
and for three days we found ourselves in
this other world he plays with strange
beautiful and overwhelming encounters
and there was this moment during the
last hours of our time the camp when
flora and I were in the community center
and these children were just playing
around us and then suddenly this
you see from the perspective of a child
I would expect this trolley to be a
pirate boat maybe a spaceship but from
the perspective of these children this
trolley was a truck a freezing lorry in
which they could hide to reach the UK
now the problem was I could relate to
the concept of childhood but it just
didn’t fit the images I was seeing right
in front of me and that is precisely
where this moment was so meaningful it
very vividly contradicted my own
long-standing assumptions about what it
meant to be a child something that I and
all of you can very much relate to it is
the same reason where we feel touched
when we see the images and the headlines
of the little boy Island Cordy being
washed up on the beach
eventually flora and I realized that the
meaningful stories we could tell through
our documentary were not those of a
child fleeing war it’s not a perspective
you could claim to know anything about
instead it was that of two students
traveling along the Belkin Rood and
observing and processing the events
unfolding around them and being aware of
what this perspective meant what kind of
privilege comes with that was the first
step for us to find out position in
these difficult debates so the first
challenge here for you is do not just
adopt some perspective that’s not
meaningful it’s frankly it’s not
possible but rather think about from
what perspective can you tell a
meaningful story that is my p4
perspective now let’s talk about
distance a little bit and we said I mean
two kinds of distances there’s the
physical kind and then there’s this kind
social distance first I want to zoom in
on physical distance you see being on
the road and this is something everyone
who’s experienced cycling longer
distances will know being on the road
makes you think differently about
distance in our own daily lives we tend
to move from point A to point B without
really paying too much attention about
everything in between but Florida and I
wanted to feel and remember every meter
that we passed and using our bicycles we
did which in turn allowed us to get a
much better Geographic sense of the the
scope of the European
gee crisis which is important because
you see in theory we all know the size
of this continent but in practice we may
experience it as a three hour KLM
airlines flight from Amsterdam to Athens
now the good news is you don’t have to
cycle across Europe to understand my
point here let me explain Florian and I
had various experiences with this
concept distance and our first day we
would cycle only 30 kilometers which is
admittedly not a lot but it was our
first day so you know we thought
accomplished something jump forward a
few weeks we could cycle up to 200
kilometers things just move much quicker
much easier and we had some less
fortunate days when I would rain
terribly and the streets were flooded or
when our bikes would break down which of
course happened every now and then and
we had more fortunate days when the
roads were clear and even and their
surroundings were just beautiful and
these factors very much influenced our
perception of distance sometimes every
one meter fell like ten where’s at other
times every 10 meters felt like one and
here’s my point we can translate that
thought into how we think about social
distance you see just like the rain and
the uneven roads made distance way so
heavily and me as I was cycling across
Europe I also felt uncomfortable talking
about the refugee crisis before this
journey because we talked about people
I felt very distant to socially this is
the same reason why Florin and I wanted
to shoot this documentary in a very
rough fashion we wanted to break down
this social distance take away the rain
and the uneven roads and bring our
audience closer to the stories and the
people that we encountered long away now
you don’t have to be in a mask and
shorten the distance between planet
Earth and Mars right but in your own
daily lives think about how can you
bring attention to things that may seem
far removed or unrelatable for others
what kind of distances are you breaking
down that is D for distance finally
let’s talk about frame you know with
every concept that comes up in
discussions especially on the refugee
crisis we have a certain frame of
reference in mind if somebody mentions
jeez you think of specific associations
attached to that label right now let me
share with you how I learned how to
redefine my frame of reference and how
this helps me to be more levered and
more inclusive when engaging in debates
first I want to talk about point a and
point B you see when I said I wanted to
cycle in between point a and point B I
initially thought of you know cycling in
between Brussels and Paris or Budapest
in essence but these are usually not the
sort of points that we find on the maps
of those fleeing across Europe more
often than not they tend to be refugee
camps train stations support points run
by volunteers and NGOs and one example
of that includes when we visited
Lanchester of Guinea
she and her husband together would
distribute food and health and hygiene
products from their home in the center
of Macedonia and in fact lencha was
widely known and referred by some media
even as modern mother Teresa and
refugees when possible would map their
routes according to these assistant
points instead of capital cities they
became point a and point B a second
frame of reference that changed for me
was my understanding of borders you know
I said I experienced borders is
something rather than visible well that
certainly changed when this happened
these are all photos of just some of
those borders that we encountered long
away and each one of them has their own
individual story but I want to focus on
the one on the bottom left here for a
second this is when flora and I visited
the Hungarians urban transition zone and
initially we didn’t plan on going there
but as we cycled across the border into
Serbia we noticed these tents being set
up on the side of the street so we
walked up to the military and convinced
them to allow us access and they did so
we went in and we talked to some of the
families and listened to their stories
and you see along this journey we had a
lot of beautiful a lot of positive
encounters but this was definitely not
an easy one we heard of mothers who gave
birth to their children in Greece
before walking up all the way to hungry
by foot or families who just didn’t know
whether the relatives were still alive
but what really what really drove his
over the edge was when Florida and I
exited the transit zone and entered into
Serbia again and the police just kind of
they just waved us through you see you
don’t know the true value of your
passport until it gives you the
privilege to leave a crisis situation
while others stay behind this of course
changed my whole frame of reference from
which to think of about borders they
weren’t all that invisible anymore
instead they had turned into this
instrument of inclusion and exclusion
and that really is the point the more
diverse your frame of reference the more
elaborate the more inclusive on your
Diaz and opinions when engaging in these
difficult debates and you don’t have to
cycle across Europe but you can just
practice this by allowing your mind to
wander way from the usual associations
you attach to specific labels and that
is my neat little checklist for you
today PDF you see as I return to the
Netherlands a lot of things stay the
same for me are going back to university
writing his armes a much more regular
amount of cycling the one thing that I
had changed was discussions on the
refugee crisis they just didn’t feel
that abstract anymore I didn’t feel
trapped in fact I knew how to position
myself in debates and more importantly
to do so with authority and control over
my own opinion and that is what I want
you to take home today defining and
whenever necessary rethinking our
perspective distance and frame of
reference allows us to build a bridge
that connects us to those voices outside
of our echo chamber and instead of
becoming traps we can actually start
listening and hopefully hopefully next
time when you come across someone and
talk to someone who still hasn’t found
that bridge yet who still struggles to
find or rethink their position in these
difficult debates it will throw them a
tennis ball thank you
you [Applause]
we’re in the middle of what has been
called though I’m not sure the
terminology is correct the year of the
European refugee crisis and I just
traveled through Jordan where I worked
with Syrian refugee children over the
summer you should probably know that as
an undergraduate student I focused on
the Middle East so traveling to Jordan
was a way for me to learn more about the
culture and improve my Arabic and when I
returned to the Netherlands I couldn’t
help but feel very uneasy and although
and you’d had to do something with the
experiences I had made in Jordan and
with the crisis I couldn’t quite
pinpoint what it was they caused this
feeling and as the days went on so did
the discussions on the refugee crisis
amongst the student body and in the
media and I often felt out of place
which you see for me is rather odd
because usually I like to pitch my ideas
on about everything but this time I felt
as if I had no contributions to make and
then I slowly realized what had happened
I felt trapped trapped in a loop of
reading the same stories and the same
newspapers arguing the same things close
our borders no open our borders refugees
are an economic burden refugees are
great for the economy and all the rest
of it and in all these discussions I
felt as if I had no frame of reference
because you see we talked about borders
but frankly the kind of borders that I
knew were usually invisible to me most
often than not there would be a few
kilometers below the ground as I was
flying above them sipping my tomato
juice on an airplane and a few
meaningful injections I’d made with
refugees for those few weeks I’d spend
in Jordan so it felt wrong for me to
just talk about in judge people’s lives
my didn’t know that much about which in
turn made me realize that I had to break
out of this echo chamber that surrounded
me and actually start listening and what
I want to share with you today is the
journey that followed this decision a me
a journey during which I would smile
across nine borders cover over 3600
kilometers and visit 13 refugee camps
across
Europe a journey which fundamentally
changed the way I approach thinking not
just about the refugee crisis but my
position in debates around these
difficult events more generally so after
this period of feeling trapped in an
echo chamber I started to brainstorm
what I could do and do you know this
feeling when you brainstorm day in and
day out about this one problem or
assignment you must complete and just
before you go crazy you eventually
figure it out and so you to relief well
this was nothing like it in fact all I
had come up with was rather a vague
probably somewhat naive idea to travel
across Europe and to use a bicycle
because at the time that seemed like an
appropriate way to really feel the
distance out cover
and after this flash of inspiration I
pitched this idea to my good friend
Florian and to my own surprise
immediately said all right when do we
start and with that the next chapter
began together with Florian and I like
to call this chapter engagement not just
engagement form of engaging with
possible sponsors for equipment and
contacts and different locations and
refugee camps across Europe but also
engagement because the countless
meetings the discussions the setting up
of a bank account together with Florian
it’s sort of how I imagine feels like
when you’re about to get married moving
forward to May 2016 after a few months
of intense preparation and networking
fell journey Lauren and I moved in
together as engaged people do and we
slowly prepare ourselves mentally to
spend a whole summer mostly in a pretty
intimate small tent together and then
finally on June 6th we set out on our
journey in front of the Peace Palace
here in the beautiful city of The Hague
and we were on the road little did we
know though that over the course of the
next 10 weeks how much would happen that
we produce over 80 hours of video
footage now let me break down those ten
weeks into ten minutes for you and share
with you how I overcame this uneasy
feeling of being trapped in an echo
chamber and the answer is quite
straightforward PDF
and with that I don’t mean the kind of
PDF that you export your Word files into
but I mean this PDF this tennis ball
represents three ideas perspective
distance and frame of reference now what
do I mean with that well first of all
you should know this tennis ball isn’t
just normal tennis ball if you look at
the photo behind me you can see that
fern and I had tennis balls attached to
our handlebars and we did that because
as we started to cycle we fairly quickly
realized that our wrists would start to
hurt we just couldn’t you know get a
good grip on those handlebars so we cut
a hole in these tennis balls attach them
to the handlebars and it made this
difficult experience of cycling longer
distances much more easy to deal with
more digestible and you can think of PDF
in the same way as it is a tool that
makes something we find difficult more
easy to deal with more digestible and
today I want to throw you this tennis
ball let’s talk about perspective first
you see the first refugee camp learn and
I visit a was called lolly near in North
and France where we had a contact with
the organization running in the kitchen
and for three days we found ourselves in
this other world he plays with strange
beautiful and overwhelming encounters
and there was this moment during the
last hours of our time the camp when
flora and I were in the community center
and these children were just playing
around us and then suddenly this
you see from the perspective of a child
I would expect this trolley to be a
pirate boat maybe a spaceship but from
the perspective of these children this
trolley was a truck a freezing lorry in
which they could hide to reach the UK
now the problem was I could relate to
the concept of childhood but it just
didn’t fit the images I was seeing right
in front of me and that is precisely
where this moment was so meaningful it
very vividly contradicted my own
long-standing assumptions about what it
meant to be a child something that I and
all of you can very much relate to it is
the same reason where we feel touched
when we see the images and the headlines
of the little boy Island Cordy being
washed up on the beach
eventually flora and I realized that the
meaningful stories we could tell through
our documentary were not those of a
child fleeing war it’s not a perspective
you could claim to know anything about
instead it was that of two students
traveling along the Belkin Rood and
observing and processing the events
unfolding around them and being aware of
what this perspective meant what kind of
privilege comes with that was the first
step for us to find out position in
these difficult debates so the first
challenge here for you is do not just
adopt some perspective that’s not
meaningful it’s frankly it’s not
possible but rather think about from
what perspective can you tell a
meaningful story that is my p4
perspective now let’s talk about
distance a little bit and we said I mean
two kinds of distances there’s the
physical kind and then there’s this kind
social distance first I want to zoom in
on physical distance you see being on
the road and this is something everyone
who’s experienced cycling longer
distances will know being on the road
makes you think differently about
distance in our own daily lives we tend
to move from point A to point B without
really paying too much attention about
everything in between but Florida and I
wanted to feel and remember every meter
that we passed and using our bicycles we
did which in turn allowed us to get a
much better Geographic sense of the the
scope of the European
gee crisis which is important because
you see in theory we all know the size
of this continent but in practice we may
experience it as a three hour KLM
airlines flight from Amsterdam to Athens
now the good news is you don’t have to
cycle across Europe to understand my
point here let me explain Florian and I
had various experiences with this
concept distance and our first day we
would cycle only 30 kilometers which is
admittedly not a lot but it was our
first day so you know we thought
accomplished something jump forward a
few weeks we could cycle up to 200
kilometers things just move much quicker
much easier and we had some less
fortunate days when I would rain
terribly and the streets were flooded or
when our bikes would break down which of
course happened every now and then and
we had more fortunate days when the
roads were clear and even and their
surroundings were just beautiful and
these factors very much influenced our
perception of distance sometimes every
one meter fell like ten where’s at other
times every 10 meters felt like one and
here’s my point we can translate that
thought into how we think about social
distance you see just like the rain and
the uneven roads made distance way so
heavily and me as I was cycling across
Europe I also felt uncomfortable talking
about the refugee crisis before this
journey because we talked about people
I felt very distant to socially this is
the same reason why Florin and I wanted
to shoot this documentary in a very
rough fashion we wanted to break down
this social distance take away the rain
and the uneven roads and bring our
audience closer to the stories and the
people that we encountered long away now
you don’t have to be in a mask and
shorten the distance between planet
Earth and Mars right but in your own
daily lives think about how can you
bring attention to things that may seem
far removed or unrelatable for others
what kind of distances are you breaking
down that is D for distance finally
let’s talk about frame you know with
every concept that comes up in
discussions especially on the refugee
crisis we have a certain frame of
reference in mind if somebody mentions
jeez you think of specific associations
attached to that label right now let me
share with you how I learned how to
redefine my frame of reference and how
this helps me to be more levered and
more inclusive when engaging in debates
first I want to talk about point a and
point B you see when I said I wanted to
cycle in between point a and point B I
initially thought of you know cycling in
between Brussels and Paris or Budapest
in essence but these are usually not the
sort of points that we find on the maps
of those fleeing across Europe more
often than not they tend to be refugee
camps train stations support points run
by volunteers and NGOs and one example
of that includes when we visited
Lanchester of Guinea
she and her husband together would
distribute food and health and hygiene
products from their home in the center
of Macedonia and in fact lencha was
widely known and referred by some media
even as modern mother Teresa and
refugees when possible would map their
routes according to these assistant
points instead of capital cities they
became point a and point B a second
frame of reference that changed for me
was my understanding of borders you know
I said I experienced borders is
something rather than visible well that
certainly changed when this happened
these are all photos of just some of
those borders that we encountered long
away and each one of them has their own
individual story but I want to focus on
the one on the bottom left here for a
second this is when flora and I visited
the Hungarians urban transition zone and
initially we didn’t plan on going there
but as we cycled across the border into
Serbia we noticed these tents being set
up on the side of the street so we
walked up to the military and convinced
them to allow us access and they did so
we went in and we talked to some of the
families and listened to their stories
and you see along this journey we had a
lot of beautiful a lot of positive
encounters but this was definitely not
an easy one we heard of mothers who gave
birth to their children in Greece
before walking up all the way to hungry
by foot or families who just didn’t know
whether the relatives were still alive
but what really what really drove his
over the edge was when Florida and I
exited the transit zone and entered into
Serbia again and the police just kind of
they just waved us through you see you
don’t know the true value of your
passport until it gives you the
privilege to leave a crisis situation
while others stay behind this of course
changed my whole frame of reference from
which to think of about borders they
weren’t all that invisible anymore
instead they had turned into this
instrument of inclusion and exclusion
and that really is the point the more
diverse your frame of reference the more
elaborate the more inclusive on your
Diaz and opinions when engaging in these
difficult debates and you don’t have to
cycle across Europe but you can just
practice this by allowing your mind to
wander way from the usual associations
you attach to specific labels and that
is my neat little checklist for you
today PDF you see as I return to the
Netherlands a lot of things stay the
same for me are going back to university
writing his armes a much more regular
amount of cycling the one thing that I
had changed was discussions on the
refugee crisis they just didn’t feel
that abstract anymore I didn’t feel
trapped in fact I knew how to position
myself in debates and more importantly
to do so with authority and control over
my own opinion and that is what I want
you to take home today defining and
whenever necessary rethinking our
perspective distance and frame of
reference allows us to build a bridge
that connects us to those voices outside
of our echo chamber and instead of
becoming traps we can actually start
listening and hopefully hopefully next
time when you come across someone and
talk to someone who still hasn’t found
that bridge yet who still struggles to
find or rethink their position in these
difficult debates it will throw them a
tennis ball thank you
you [Applause]
Please follow and like us: