Campaigns

Our Pride work focuses on the shift from performance to authenticity.

For many neurodivergent people, the first lesson society teaches is that belonging must be earned by hiding. Masking becomes a survival strategy. Difference becomes something to explain, soften or apologise for. And too often, people learn to survive by becoming less visible.

The Pride department exists to change that. It builds cultural rituals, public celebrations, friendship pathways and community spaces where neurodivergent people can see themselves differently: not as problems to be fixed, but as whole people with dignity, beauty, insight, rhythm, humour, intensity, sensitivity, creativity and strength.

Campaign for Neurodivergent Self-Acceptance

Self-acceptance should never be a lonely task carried in silence. Too many neurodivergent people grow up surrounded by deficit-based language and the pressure to earn belonging through performance. This campaign exists to dismantle the burden of masking and replace it with something stronger: the courage to take up space as yourself.

Through this campaign, we build the cultural traditions that make pride something people can practise together. Neurodiversity Pride Day on June 16, ND Pride Week, the Science Conference, the flag-hoisting ritual, ND Pride flags, Pride Frames and school lessons about ND Pride all help create public recognition. The VR Pride Universe, the DJ Marathon, Neurospicy Workshops, the narrative work of #weareallnuts, the Stride App and the sports programme bring pride into movement, creativity, learning, embodiment and community.

This campaign is not only about visibility. It is about memory, language and ritual. It gives neurodivergent people moments in the year where they do not have to explain why they matter. They can gather, celebrate, reflect, dance, learn, speak, raise a flag, join an event, enter a virtual world, or simply recognise: my brain belongs in the human story.

Already taking shape: Neurodiversity Pride Day has grown from a Dutch initiative into an international celebration, with flag-hoistings, online and offline events, global participation, and a growing set of traditions that make neurodivergent pride visible across countries and communities.

The Point on the Horizon: A future where every neurodivergent child grows up seeing their brain-type not as a defect to be hidden, but as an essential part of our collective human brilliance.

Our Education work focuses on the places where people are shaped, supported and given the tools to understand themselves.

Education is not only what happens in school. It also happens in workplaces, coaching rooms, online courses, newsletters, toolkits, museums, communities, training sessions and moments of self-recognition. The Education department helps translate neurodiversity into everyday practice: how we teach, how we work, how we support, how we explain, and how we make knowledge accessible.

This department works from a simple belief: support should not only begin after harm has already happened. We need schools, workplaces and learning systems that recognise strengths earlier, reduce needless exclusion, and make affirming knowledge easier to reach.

1. Campaign for Neuro-inclusive Classrooms

A classroom shapes much more than academic attainment. It shapes self-image. When schools read difference mainly through deficits, many students learn that they are the problem. They become the child who is “too much”, “too slow”, “too sensitive”, “too distracted” or “too complicated”.

We are not interested in classrooms that merely “include” neurodivergent students in theory while exhausting them in practice. This campaign aims to move schools away from deficit-thinking toward environments where more students can genuinely thrive.

Our clearest flagship is the Neurodiversity-Friendly Schools Program, supported by the wider work of the Neurodiversity Education Academy, international partnerships and European partnership projects. We provide a practical ecosystem of tools including My Amazing Brain magazine, My Creative Brain, Brainy App, What’s STRONG With You? toolkits, teen empowerment journals, Brain Strength Card Decks, school workshops and the Educator Courses App.

This work helps teachers look beyond behaviour management toward regulation, participation, strengths, self-understanding and belonging. It is enhanced by projects such as EFURM, which explores museum-based inclusion strategies, NeuroEmergence, which creates space for learning labs and community practice, and the Sigma Project’s AI-VR simulations for educators.

The goal is not to make every child fit the same classroom. The goal is to help classrooms become places where more kinds of minds can learn without being shamed for the way they process, move, focus, communicate or recover.

Already taking shape: This campaign has already produced magazines, classroom-ready tools, app components, workshops, strengths-based resources and programme structures that schools, teachers and students can actually use.

The Point on the Horizon: A global educational standard where every learning environment notices strengths and reduces needless exclusion from the start.

3. Campaign for Free Access to ND Materials

If useful knowledge or affirming materials are available only to those with time, money, diagnosis, professional access or institutional permission, then inclusion remains shallow.

A movement that believes in dignity cannot reserve self-understanding and support for people who can easily pay for them. Financial barriers, long waiting times and bureaucratic thresholds often hit hardest at the exact moments when people most need language, tools and care.

This campaign ensures that socio-economic barriers do not block people from accessing the resources they need to flourish. Through the NEA Newsletter, we distribute a growing library of resources, including magazines like My Creative Brain and toolkits like What’s ALIVE in You?. The broader Academy ecosystem includes free resources, low-cost toolkits, downloadable guides, reflection tools, card decks, practical supports and learning materials that people can use in real life.

We explicitly remove gatekeepers through the Mikel Rijsdijk Memorial Grant, providing coaching access and courses to people in need. The Limbo Project supports neurodivergent queer refugees during some of the most vulnerable transitions a person can face. Related support pathways, including coaching and community-based access routes, help make neuroinclusive knowledge less dependent on income or formal status.

This campaign is about distribution as dignity. It asks: who gets access to support, and who is quietly left out? Then it builds pathways that bring more people inside.

Already taking shape: The Mikel Rijsdijk Memorial Grant, the Limbo Project, NEA resources, free PDFs, low-cost guides, newsletters, coaching routes and accessible materials show how support can become less dependent on money, permission or formal systems.

The Point on the Horizon: An equitable world where high-level self-understanding tools and professional guidance are freely available to everyone, regardless of background or income.

Our Research work focuses on the places where knowledge becomes tools, where lived experience becomes design, and where neurodivergent people help shape the questions being asked.

For too long, neurodivergent lives have often been studied from a distance, interpreted through narrow frames, or translated into systems that were not built with neurodivergent people in the room. We want a different knowledge culture: one that is ethical, practical, participatory and useful.

The Research department connects student-led research, fellows, consortia, publications, communication tools, assistive technology, innovation pathways and public knowledge-sharing. It is where curiosity becomes responsibility.

1. Campaign for Advancing Research & Knowledge Sharing.

Knowledge shapes policy, education, work, care and public imagination. When neurodivergent lives are studied mainly through narrow medical or deficit-first lenses, the result can be elegant theory and poor social reality.

This campaign exists to build a different knowledge culture: one that takes lived experience seriously, values practical usefulness, and shares knowledge in ways that can actually change systems.

Through the Research Fellows Program, student-led research, the Neurovisionary and ND Builders consortia, participation in wider research networks, research reports, formal publications and the annual Science Conference, we help neurodivergent people participate as fellows, co-designers, researchers and knowledge-makers.

We translate these insights into public and usable knowledge through the Neurodignity Canon, the Neurodiversity Deepdive Podcast, reports, publications and community-facing learning formats. Research only becomes movement-building knowledge when it travels back into classrooms, policy, workplaces, families and daily life.

This campaign is not only about producing more information. It is about changing who gets to know, who gets to ask, who gets to interpret, and who benefits from the answers.

Already taking shape: The Research Fellows Program, student-led research pathways, mentoring, reports, publications, the Science Conference, the Neurodignity Canon and the Neurodiversity Deepdive Podcast are building research capacity as well as research output.

The Point on the Horizon: A scientific community where neurodivergent experts are primary authors of the knowledge that affects their own lives.

3. Campaign for Advancing Opportunities for Innovation

Many neurodivergent people are already solving problems the world has not even named properly yet. The task is not to suppress that inventive energy, but to recognise it, support it and help it travel.

Neurodivergent people are often asked to adapt to systems they did not design. Yet many of the most practical ideas for better systems begin with the lived ingenuity of people who notice friction, mismatch or inefficiency first-hand.

The public face of this work is Autvinder, where autistic inventors are recognised through the Autvinder Competition and the Autvinder Awards. This is supported by ND Hacks, our digital incubator and platform for creators, and by the Design Your Life consortium, which helps place neurodivergent individuals at the heart of designing the future.

The campaign also includes ND Innovators, workshops for innovators, support for inventors, community recognition and practical next steps for people with ideas that deserve structure, visibility and momentum.

This campaign values invention not as abstract creativity, but as a pathway from lived problem-solving to prototyping, recognition, community backing and social usefulness.

Already taking shape: Autvinder, the Autvinder Competition, Autvinder Awards, ND Hacks, ND Innovators, Design Your Life, workshops and inventor-support pathways together create both recognition and next-step infrastructure for neurodivergent innovation.

The Point on the Horizon: A society that actively invites neurodivergent thinkers to help solve the most complex technical and social problems of the next century.

1. Campaign for Political Participation.

We insist that neurodivergent people should not only appear in policy as a target group, but as a political voice.

Public policy shapes diagnosis, education, work, care, transport, public space and the basic conditions of citizenship. Yet neurodivergent people are still too often spoken about rather than spoken with. This campaign exists to change that power imbalance.

Through the Neuro-Inclusive Politician Award, we translate lived experience into public accountability and political recognition in both the Netherlands and India. Through the Neuroinclusive City Scorecard and the annual City of the Year recognition, the campaign reaches into local government and helps municipalities assess, compare and improve neuroinclusive policy.

By sharing the 10 Motions for a Neurodivergent Netherlands, we provide a concrete policy package that covers areas such as teacher education, anti-harm priorities and the elimination of discriminatory driving tests. Through Political Influence: Non-Zero methods, lobbying, policy proposals and Neurodiversity Scorecards, we make party positions visible and move political imagination from national parliaments into daily municipal practice.

This campaign is broader than electoral visibility alone. It builds democratic pathways, accountability mechanisms and public hope.

Already taking shape: The Neuro-Inclusive Politician Award, neuroinclusive city work, the 10 Motions, scorecards, policy proposals and political advocacy show that this campaign is building a public record of neuroinclusive leadership and institutional change.

The Point on the Horizon: Full political representation where neurodiversity is a standard, mainstream consideration in every legislative debate worldwide.

Growth, for us, is not growth for growth’s sake. It is the discipline of becoming more capable without becoming more careless.

The larger the Foundation becomes, the more it needs structures that protect care, coherence, ethics and continuity. This campaign exists because scale is not the goal on its own. Responsible, values-held scale is.

This campaign centres on the professionalisation of our organisation, guided by the strategic wisdom of the Wisdom Council and the governance of the Executive Board. It includes advisory guides, strategic frameworks, board development, international coordination, leadership structures and long-term organisational learning.

Its purpose is to help the Foundation grow its benevolent impact while protecting the integrity of its core mission: bridging the gap between neurodivergent people and a society not yet fully prepared for them.

We want a larger future, but one that still knows how to listen. We want a stronger organisation, but not one that forgets tenderness. We want to scale the work without scaling harm, exhaustion or mission drift.