Umwelten

Stichting Bruggenmakers

🏛️Operational

4 min read

Who they are

Stichting Bruggenmakers is a Dutch charity (ANBI-registered) that describes its mission as reducing the gap between individuals and society by promoting inclusion, understanding, and cooperation. It creates opportunities for people with migration backgrounds, neurodivergent individuals, and others distant from the labour market, through education, employment, and community initiatives. Bruggenmakers is the institutional home for the Sensonate programme, including its internationalisation and knowledge infrastructure work. This wiki — Umwelten — grew out of that work, though it has since become an independent project.

Founding and governance

  • Founders: K.M.T. Henke (Karol Henke) and Robert Schuurmans Stekhoven
  • Founded: 1986 (based on Schuurmans Stekhoven’s involvement since that year)
  • Status: ANBI (Algemeen Nut Beogende Instelling — Dutch public-benefit charity status, tax-deductible)
  • KVK: 97499749
  • Address: Laan van Meerdervoort 16, 2517 AK Den Haag
  • Email: welkom@bruggenmakers.nl
  • Phone: +31 85 744 4661

Vision

“Een inclusieve en verbonden samenleving waarin iedereen gelijke kansen heeft om te groeien en bij te dragen, ongeacht achtergrond of omstandigheden” — an inclusive and connected society in which everyone has equal chances to grow and contribute, regardless of background or circumstances.

Programmes

Bruggenmakers runs a portfolio of programmes, each with a distinct focus but sharing the same inclusion-through-participation framing:

  • Sensonate — sensory processing knowledge and tools for autistic people with and without intellectual disability. Originally developed within the SGL research project at UMCG TGO and previously stewarded by NVA; now being internationalised under Bruggenmakers. The Umwelten wiki is produced within this programme context and hosted under Bruggenmakers.
  • TalentTwist BV — employment agency specialising in job placement for neurodivergent individuals and autistic people.
  • Autcraft Nederland — a Minecraft server designed as a safe, fun, and supportive environment for children and young adults on the autism spectrum. The Dutch counterpart to the original international Autcraft project. Tagged project/autcraft across the wiki.
  • Thuiszitters & Education — addresses students who have dropped out of or been excluded from the standard education system. Tagged project/thuiszitters.
  • STEM Projects — education initiatives including a STEM museum for children, playground-based learning, and school innovation.
  • Social Inclusion Projects — intergenerational partnerships connecting elderly residents with primary schools.

Karol Henke

Karol Maximilian Theodore Henke is a co-founder of Bruggenmakers and is currently leading the Sensonate programme’s international expansion. He served as director of the Nederlandse Vereniging voor Autisme (NVA) from March 2019 before continuing his work at Bruggenmakers. His combined background in NVA leadership and Bruggenmakers’ inclusion-through-participation model is part of why Sensonate is being hosted here: it brings the programme together with aligned work on neurodivergent employment (TalentTwist), children’s digital environments (Autcraft), and excluded young people (Thuiszitters) under a single institutional roof.

Nature of relationship

Bruggenmakers is not a partner to Sensonate — it is currently the host organisation. Everything in this wiki is produced under Bruggenmakers’ institutional umbrella. The wiki’s curator (the user building this knowledge base) leads both internal and external communications for the programme and reports into the Bruggenmakers structure.

Current contact points

Roles, not personal details. Primary contact for Sensonate programme direction: Karol Henke (programme lead). Primary contact for the knowledge wiki and communications: the curator of this vault.

Notes for future curators

Bruggenmakers is the institutional frame, but the substantive content of Sensonate still draws heavily on the SGL project’s legacy at UMCG TGO and on the ongoing Dutch-language stewardship of sensonate.nl by NVA. A second curator picking this up should not assume that “Sensonate = Bruggenmakers”; the relationships with the Dutch autism knowledge ecosystem, especially NVA, UMCG TGO, the Academische Werkplaats Autisme, and the Autisme Fonds, are part of Sensonate’s value. See the peer-organisation pages in 05-landscape/peer-organisations/ for the full map.

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