News from YIP – October 2025

Welcome to the October recap of YIP18,

The month of October has passed and with it the leaves have fallen. 

November is here and in only a few short weeks YIP 18 will pack their belongings and travel to Northern India for the next stretch of their journey. 

The month of October marked a shift in the curriculum: before the autumn break, courses focussed towards understanding the global realities of the world, whilst after the break, the focus turned inward, toward self-understanding and developing inner awareness. 

Prior to the break, the Yippies explored the courses Economics and Power, Privilege and Oppression. After the break, they began the first stage of planning their Personal Initiative Projects and engaged in the courses Moving in Complexity and Portrait Painting.

Alongside the courses, the Yippies have been busy with preparing for India, designing the hybrid Initiative Forum (which will be organised by YIP alumni and hosted by YIP18), raising money to fund their internships in India and Nepal, and building their shared community life.

Written by Sarah Bennett

In this newsletter you will find: 

• Values and Economics: Drawing by Altas Falkeström
• Power, Privilege and Oppression: Scuplture by Kiki Lin
• Autumn Break: Adventures to North Sweden by Lilliahna Rogers 
• Personal Initiative Week: Photo and Words from Milena Beisman
• Movement in Complexity Week: Poem by Moira Bauwens 
• Current YIP Project: Meditation and Authentic Relating Workshops by Harrison Tan
• Alumni Project: The Flying Seagull Project and Radical Play By Esmée Begemann
• A Message From the YIP Team: YIP19 Invitation
• Upcoming events in YIP18: YIP18’s Skillshare Day

Values and Economics 

This week made me think a lot about how deeply we’re all connected to, and shaped by, the systems around us. It was a time of questioning: how much control do we really have, and how much are we just moving within boundaries we can’t always see? I found myself reflecting on the tension between power, dependence, and responsibility, which stayed with me as I created this piece.

I began this piece by spilling ink onto paper and let myself see what emerged from the shapes it created. From that chaos, a figure of control appeared. The person that emerged feels powerful, almost menacing, as they point forward, surrounded by echoes of conflict and destruction. Yet, they’re not free. Chains bind them to the wall, their feet, even their back, a reminder that power itself is never without constraint.

In many ways, the chained figure mirrors capitalism itself in its powerful, commanding, and consuming nature. Yet ultimately, it is fragile and trapped in the very cycle of control and dependence it creates.

Written by Atlas Falkeström

Power, Privilege & Oppression

Power, Privilege, and Oppression Week, like some of our other courses such as War and Conflict or Economics, helped me become more aware of many global issues that humanity continues to face. But this course stood out because it taught me how to take responsibility in concrete and practical ways, for example, how to respond when a loved one says something racist.
I learned a lot about how to take meaningful action, and I really appreciated the way the course was structured. By the end of the week, many of my questions were answered, and I felt much more confident in my understanding.
On Monday, we explored key concepts related to the topic. Many of us also introduced additional terms like internalized oppression and virtue signaling, which led to engaging discussions.
Our contributor Didi created an incredibly safe and open space for us to have these conversations. I felt grateful to be able to share some of my own experiences, and it was powerful to hear that others related to them. This inspired me to create similar spaces for open dialogue in the future. Didi truly motivated me.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, we did the privilege walk activity, and on Thursday and Friday, we focused on readings and case studies. The combination of theory and practice made the week feel complete and meaningful. I learned how to call in and call out appropriately in different situations, and by the end, I felt hopeful about the future and our ability to create change.

Written by Kiki Lin

Autumn Break

The autumn break was full of laughter, long walks, sleep ins and sweet kitchen conversation. 

The five of us set out on a seven hour road trip up north to Atlas’s 300 year old family home. We passed fields and fjords and forests of golden trees shedding their leaves. We listened to songs from our childhoods and told the stories they hold for us, and stopped every few hours to walk the little dog ‘Saga’. 

Within the old yellow house, we danced and lounged by the fire and baked vegan chocolate cake and flipped pancakes. The dining table held space for endless conversations of love, consumerism, politics, book lists and songwriting. 

It was a much needed break which made Tallevana and our little community feel even more like home, as we returned to the welcoming arms of our house mates and the homely embrace of Ytterjärna.

Written by Lilliahna Rogers

Personal Initiative Week

This week Brenno guided us through the process of finding a guiding question for our personal initiative. Personally it felt like a really essential step of understanding what guides me in life.

What is important?
What needs to be understood and changed within and in the world?
What is the quest behind the question?

I dived deeper into the feeling of letting go of control and just being with whatever is present. We are constantly trying to conceptualise our feelings and experiences. Putting them into words, even though we know that they cannot describe complex reality.
For my personal initiative I want to explore different ways of relating to, and understanding reality and my full potential, with my body, my voice, with listening. In this process I let myself be guided by creativity, the needs of my body and by the breath.

Brenno shared his initiatives and life experiences with us and gave us tools to help us in difficult moments.
Through various exercises we helped each other by listening and asking questions to clarify our ideas. At the small presentations in the end of the week, it was so beautiful to see all the colourful ideas growing out of just one week of process!

Especially now in this darkening autumn days here in Sweden, it felt good to connect to the inner light and source of energy.

Written by Milena Beisman

Movement in Complexity

This week, together with Justas, we explored different forms of movement. We began with personal practice, working with zero forms and basic shapes of the body to awaken our lymphatic system, spine, and limbs. From there, we moved into locomotive exercises—various crawling and technical movements in which we mainly used our bodies contralaterally, connecting the two halves. The body was explored as an animal, something fluidly connected and self-regulating, always in motion and constantly balancing itself. Even when standing still, the body reorganizes itself, like trees that sway gently in the wind.

Another important aspect of the week was the social body. It was new for me to work through the social body of our group, focusing on trust and emotional processing. Through a range of exercises, we tuned into the pace of the trust that was present among us and allowed it to guide our interactions.

The main challenge for me lay in surrender. It felt wonderful to move in such a smooth and continuous way, and my respect for what my body does for me grew by the minute. Yet, the energy these exercises demanded sometimes met inner resistance—there was a voice in me that wanted to lie down, to drift away and distract myself.

Ultimately, the focus of this week was not so much on building a relationship with our bodies, but on acting through the unity of body and mind, which in turn transformed our relationship to the world. By moving our bodies in unfamiliar ways and new flows, we cultivated suppleness instead of stiffness, and we found ourselves inhabiting our whole bodies—not just our heads. I hope I take it with me in the way I handle obstacles in life. To explore, gently and openly new paths, instead of acting from what I already know with rigidity, not really feeling into the situation. In this sense, we were invited not to move in the ways we already knew, but to reach the place where the predictable falls away, and to act from there.

Written by Moira Bauwens

Current YIP Project:

As a new segment to the newsletter, we have the ‘Current YIP Project’, where a current Yippie shares a project they are working on. Here we can get an insight into who YIP18 are, and what initiatives and creative endeavors they are putting into the world. This week we hear from Harrison about his meditation project.

Meditation Project

“Trust in God, and tie your camel.”
– Muhammad, Sunan al-Tirmidhī 2517

“You have to be somebody before you can be nobody.”
– Jack Engler, Psychologist and Buddhist Scholar

Earlier this year, emerging from three months of silence, I felt I needed to tie my camel. I have more somebodying to do. I think that’s why I was drawn to the Youth Initiative Program.

More and more, I find my somebody business (self development) is inseparable from my nobody business (selflessness). Much of my time at YIP has been dedicated to sharing meditative practices. Each morning, I offer a silent meditation hour. On Thursdays, I host a space for contemplative fellowship. On Saturdays, I offer a half hour of breathwork. And, some weekends, I lead workshops in authentic relating / interpersonal meditation.

Two to five of us meet in a little library in our house. We flip the coffee table on its side, sit on some pillows, and listen to the sound of a bell inviting us into silence.

For me, meditation is being intimate with experience. In stillness, the mind’s insanity can finally settle down. When we’re undistracted, we can see things as they are.

“By letting go of whatever thoughts may come, no matter how powerful or fascinating they may be, and constantly returning to the meditation, our mental habits lose their hold over us. We create space for new possibilities, new realities, new being.”
– Ram Dass, Spiritual Teacher and Psychologist

Written by Harrison Tan

Alumni Project:

The Flying Seagull Project and Radical Play 

Some days after the autumn elections in the Netherlands, on a train between Rotterdam and Amsterdam, I open my laptop to write a little something into the space of YIP.
I’m thinking back to June 2020, when I graduated from YIP12 on that land near the Baltic fjord.
A warm Swedish summer.

Funny enough, I’m taken back to a moment a few years before I joined YIP myself — a moment in the Kulturhuset, when I heard a poem that nestled itself into my inner compass and has somehow continued to guide the directions I walk in today.

“When the world loses hope
And casts its eye aside
When the bombs have floored your homeland and there’s nowhere left to hide,
When all the routes to safety have long since been tried
I will never give up fighting
For the value of your lives
I will never give up fighting
For the value of your lives…”

It’s by Leo Keller — her sister, if I remember correctly, spoke it aloud at a YIP initiative forum.
I can’t recall her name, but if you read this and know her, please let her know I still carry that poem with me.

The year after YIP12 finished, I joined a project called The Flying Seagull Project: a group of clowns, musicians, circus artists, performers, and playmakers who tour refugee camps and asylum centres across the margins of Europe — bringing play and laughter to the children who live there.

What do we do? Perhaps you could call it crisis clowning, trauma work, or community building…
but really, we just play. With children. Giving them back some childhood and letting them know we want them here. They are welcome. Their dreams are welcome. We believe that our futures are the dreams we have as kids turned into reality.

As a kid born into a migrant family, I grew up with a lived understanding of how the systems we inhabit work better for some groups than for others. I wasn’t a first-generation, but I witnessed my parents and grandparents trying to root themselves in a country that, in many ways, felt alien and unwelcoming to them.
 

Now, working with refugee children, I try not to project these experiences onto them – to meet them just as they are — but by now, I know a thing or two about intergenerational trauma.

Recently, I’ve initiated several projects in collaboration with a theatre in the Netherlands.
One is a short dance film exploring this intergenerational journey. Another is a community project where we host theatre workshops for the residents of the local asylum centre and invite them into the theatre.

With Europe closing its gates and more and more fascist parties winning elections, I believe it’s important to train our hearts to be open — and to show our children that play is not forbidden.
In fact, it’s necessary.

Check us out if this resonates, and join the play revolution!

HOPLA!

Written by Esmée Begemann

A Message from the Organising Team

Greetings from the YIP Office!

To our readers near and far, it is once again the exciting time of year when we send our invitation out into the world.

An invitation to the young seekers, movers, and imagineers – those ready to explore themselves and their unique contribution to this time. A time filled with distraction and destruction, yet also with hopeful listening – listening for what is wanting to become, both inwardly and outwardly.

It is an invitation to embark on a 10-month journey of communal living with 20~40 other young people, and learning from international change makers across diverse fields of Work about how they are responding to what they sense is wanting to emerge. 

Are you someone searching for such an education – or do you know young people who are? Please join us in spreading the word and helping those young people find us.

With great curiosity, we await those who will respond to our invitation and become part of the constellation of YIP19 2026-2027. 

With gratitude,

The YIP Team