Discover the Netherlands’ progressive approach to LGBTQ+ rights, gender issues, and sex education. Develop college and professional skills as you learn how to become a better advocate for the community.
In 2015, The Experiment launched the first-ever LGBTQ+ focused abroad program for high school students. In this program, you’ll explore the Netherlands’ longstanding progressive history of international human rights advocacy through workshops and lectures by Dutch academics and LGBTQ+ activists. Visit organizations engaged in gender, sexuality and transgender, and other social justice topics.
Engage with Dutch culture as you share daily life with a local family during your homestay. You will also have an opportunity to reciprocate through community service with an elderly LGBTQ+ population. Participate in course lectures, reflection sessions, round table discussions with local youth, field visits to museums and local organizations working in gender and sexuality. Enhance your understanding of the way issues such as immigration, race, ethnicity, religion, and gender intersect and influence modern Dutch identity, including how the history of slavery has shaped black identity in the Netherlands.
Upon successful completion of this program, students will earn three college credits through The Experiment’s accredited partner institution, School for International Training.
The Experiment’s programs are designed to build skills that will help you succeed. In the Netherlands, you will learn:
TECHNICAL SKILLS
INTERPERSONAL SKILLS
All my life I have had to hide who I was, what I felt, why I do what I do, but this experience has changed all of that completely. The Experiment has allowed me to see that there is a whole world out there.
This itinerary is only a sample and is subject to change. Because of factors such as group size and availability of in-country offerings such as festivals, your experience — including sites visited and the number of days spent in each location — may differ somewhat from the one presented below.
Orientation in Heemskerk/Amsterdam
Thematic Focus
Excursion to Rotterdam and The Hague
Rotterdam:
The Hague:
Thematic Focus
Excursion to Middleburg, Zeeland
Program Reflection and Wrap-up in Amsterdam
Departure
The Experiment’s group leaders go through a rigorous selection process and have extensive experience with youth education, local expertise in the country or region of their program, language abilities, knowledge in their program theme, travel logistics and management know-how, and experience with health, safety and risk management.
Hometown: Houston, Texas
Education: Middlebury Institute of International Studies
Experience in: The Netherlands, Germany
Peter’s wanderlust and interest in international education stems directly from a desire to satisfy his “utter loquaciousness.” Inquisitive, affable, and collaborative from a young age, he began studying German at the age of 12. Language, and the connections it enables one to make with others, was the catalyst that propelled Peter to leave Houston, Texas in search of other horizons, perspectives, and syntax structures. Peter’s first abroad experience was in the Northern Woods of Minnesota at Waldsee, an immersive German-language summer camp, where he later became a counselor and teacher. During college, Peter lived and learned for an academic year in Munich, Germany. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in German, Russian, and gender studies, Peter taught English with the Fulbright Commission in rural Austria, where he reveled in the subtle nuances of the many regional dialects. Peter returned to Portland to teach pre-k and elementary-aged learners at the German International School for three years before pursuing his MA in International Education Management with a concentration in Teaching Foreign Languages at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California.
College credit-bearing programs are led by accomplished and experienced faculty approved by the School for International Training (SIT). Faculty of record typically live in the country of study and are responsible for instructional content, classroom and field experiences, and daily program operations. They work in close consultation with SIT’s Dean of Faculty and The Experiment staff team and group leaders to craft an engaging, college-level curriculum and design field and internship experiences that match student needs and interests.
Jana is the Academic Director for SIT’s study abroad programs in the Netherlands. She holds a PhD in history from Penn State University. She also attended Western Michigan University and Hope College. She is the author of Informal Marriages in Early Modern Venice (Routledge, 2018), the editor of Monsters and Borders in the Early Modern Imagination (Routledge, 2018), and the translator of Girolamo Benzoni’s 1565 travel narrative History of the New World (Penn State Press, 2017). She has also written several reviews and articles about sexuality and gender in Europe. She comes to SIT after twenty years in American higher education, teaching at Iowa State, Whitman College, Marquette, Penn State, and Western Michigan. Her current research centers on sex work, rape, and questions of consent in a modern European and American context. Jana is a native Michigander happily living in Amsterdam. She loves yoga, is learning to cycle fearlessly, and cherishes every moment she can spend with Alice, the world’s sweetest basset hound.
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