History & Development

Around 15 years ago we started with the foundation ‘Culture Clash4U (CC4U)’. The reason why it came into being was a sad. A friend of ours at the university had committed suicide because she was pregnant with the baby of someone who was not from the same culture as hers. It was very difficult for us to comprehend of how hopeless and suffocated she would have felt. Upon research we noticed that the number of suicides among different cultures living in Netherlands was huge, especially between young people from 2nd and 3rd generation migrant families.

At the time, Netherlands had 200 different nationalities living here and there was not real intercultural dialogue between them and especially not one focussing on youth. So we felt the urge to do something about it and started organizing theater debates on our own initiative in which we would discuss different taboos among cultures, social exclusion, human rights and inequality. We held debates in unconventional places from religious places like mosques, churches to clubs and canteen. It was Loud, chaotic & messy, but successful. Kees Buist from the organization STEK liked our approach and way of work and helped us to become an official organization.

Right after that we got more projects and our focus expanded from organizing intercultural dialogues to also organize activities in which we would empower youth and help them develop their talent, so they could also use that talent to make a positive impact on the society. We were organizing events with Russian opera singers and rappers to talent shows in big concert halls like Dr. Anton Philipszaal and Lucent. Some of the good others ending in disaster (like with riots and military police evacuating the building), but we kept moving forward and developed successful concepts like Street Life, Harry Springer Show, Hague in Peace, The Hague Youth Factory (The HYF), Indutchables, The Hague Film Awards, Lets Talk about Sex, You got the Choice, Stop geweld festival, Superhelden van Den Haag,  The media Time Bomb, Diversity Rocks, 2103 festival, XIEK festival, JAZ study weekends,  I AM FUTURE, The  Moslims are Coming,  Pappa vs Gandhi, the introvert and many more.

In 2016, we were introduced to  Erasmus+  program  which led to new projects  & partnerships and opened the door to Europe and international Youth work