Loesje Belarus

Loesje was born in Arnhem, Holland on Thursday, November 24th, 1983 at 6:40 p.m. Some weeks before, her birth had been announced by posters on the streets. Together with a group of nine friends she started her energetic life as postergirl on the streets of Arnhem.

The purpose was to develope a new initiative to escape from the continuing downward spirale of the critical political movements of that time. Loesje signed the texts with her own name, to make them more personal, to reflect the clearness and simplicity of the ideas.

These texts of a growing-up girl excited new reactions and interest. In September 1985 had member-groups in several cities in Holland. New wild ideas were starting. Loesje joined the national elections for the parliament for example. Heaven-storming, she reached further than the height of the jumping-pole and exceeded the contents of het purse. But Loesje was welcomed and enthusiastically supported. Luckily, Loesje did not win the race for a parliament seat but Loesje as a poster collective was a big success. At the beginning of September 1986, Loesje could count 67 local groups with 340 members all over the Netherlands.

In the years 1988-1990 borders were broken everywhere and Loesje broke out of Holland. Shortly after the wall came down, Loesje was already visiting Berlin with a group of fifty friends. In the Spring a small group travelled through all the former East Block countries, making contacts, writing texts, spreading posters and ideas. The trip was called "Red pepper", and a book with the same name was written about it. Somewhere here, Loesje started to travel more and more around the continent and world, both as a person and as an idea. Local groups started in many countries, writing texts in their own languages. Loesje started to publish a monthly international series of posters, besides the already existing national and local texts. Members from different countries started gathering at yearly summercamps to meet eachother and share their thoughts. Since then Loesje just continued travelling. From east to south to north and west. In 1996 Loesje and her friends wrote their first international book; "Hey Peter, let's do something about it", an optimistic manifesto for a creative society. In the Spring 2004 she made a long trip through the new member states of the EU, "Working towards the creative society", visiting youth groups, giving workshops and spreading young thoughts on posters. The result she compiled into a book "I entered the EU without travelling".

In the first years of Loesje International the office was sited in Arnhem. Due to the rapid expansion of Loesje in former Eastern Block countries it was decided in 1995 that the office was to move to Pezinok, Slovakia. In January of 1996 this was realised but practical problems forced us to move the office to Linköping in Sweden in May 1996. During the summer of 1999 it moved back to its roots, Arnhem. Now, in 2005, Loesje is on her way to Berlin. In the Summer of 2005 she'll bring her adventures and international headquarters eastwards to continue conquering the world from there.

источник: http://www.loesje.org