Board Members
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Koen Vliegenthart | Chairman
Koen was born in Rotterdam, Holland, in 1953. After retiring as Financial Director of Zeeman textile Supers, Koen spends his time supporting a number of charity organisations focused on developing countries, like the microfinance organisation Oikocredit and Save the Children India. He also runs his own foundation, called Elishua which supports small health care projects in the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
In Egypt, Koen has worked with World Servants, an organisation that facilitates three-week summer working vacations for a predominantly student clientele and has been involved in the construction of many girls homes and schools in the past decade, especially in the Beni Suef region. It was through this philanthropy that Koen came in contact with Cornelis Hulsman and his organisation and became (and remains) very enthusiastic about their ideas and goals. That is the reason why Koen joined the Stichting Arab West Foundation as a board member in 2005 and became its chairman in 2011.
Koen can be found on LinkedIn.
Dick van der Steen | Secretary
Dick van der Steen joined the board of Arab-West Foundation in April 2010; however he has been aware of the activities of AWF since the summer of 2000, when he invited to a lecture presented by Cornelis Hulsman in Den Haag. As van der Steen recalls “I found his presentation on Christians in Egypt and their place in Muslim society fascinating.”
He believes in the work of Arab-West Report is of major importance because of the many similarities seen between Egypt and the Netherlands, which are both pluralistic societies with peoples of many different backgrounds.
Aside from the similarities there are also differences. Egypt’s Christians have lived since the beginning of Christianity in Egypt. That is another reason why Dick remains so fascinated by this topic. “We are dealing here with an ancient church with roots to the first century A.D. The Egyptian church has a played a major role in the development of world Christianity and they are, rightly, proud of such a history.” Where the church and the bible attracted van der Steen to Egypt (Egypt is mentioned over 600 times in the Bible), the work of Arab-West Report has helped him deepen his understanding of contemporary Muslim-Christian relations in Egypt.
Dick was a member of the diaconate of the Christian Reformed Church in Den Haag-West in the Netherlands, where for a majority of the time he was treasurer. His background includes IT for admin-support and management support systems which he brings with him to Arab-West Foundation.
Dick van der Steen can be found on LinkedIn.
Célest Voogel | Treasurer
Céleste Voogel was born in Capelle aan den IJssel in 1992. She studied Law at the University of Leiden and is specialised in Criminal Law. She works as a legal professional.
Through the Christian Reformed Church in The Hague, she came into contact with the Arab-West Foundation and its work.
She has been a board member of AWF since 2016. As a board member and treasurer, she focuses on general board tasks and legal aspects of the foundation.
Advisors to the board
Cornelis Hulsman | Director
Cornelis Hulsman is general director of Arab West Foundation's sister organisation, the Center for Intercultural Dialogue and Translation (LLC) and Deputy Chairman of the Center for Arab-West Understanding. He also heads the office of the Stichting Arab-West Foundation in the Netherlands and executes decisions made by the board. For his resume click here.
Eildert Mulder | Advisor
Arabist and journalist. He served as editor with the Dutch Daily Trouw from 1984-2015 and focused on the Middle East and Islam. He has known the work of Cornelis Hulsman since the 1970s. He witnessed the foundation of Arab-West Report in 1997 and used the documentation for several of his articles. He joined the board as advisor in 2015.
Hanneke Gelderblom-Lankhout
Was a member-and later faction leader for 12 years of the City Council of the Hague and after that a member of the Senate for 13 years. During that period, she was also a member of the Dutch delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe for 5 years.
She was actively involved in that human rights community by assisting in the building of democratic societies in countries in Central and Eastern Europe that had been affected by severe internal hostilities: Bosnia, Georgia, North Macedonia and Armenia. She worked with the late politician Ed van Tijn (1934-1921), in the Dutch branch of the International Centre for Peace in the Middle East (ICPME), a primarily Jewish organisation that aimed at peace with the Palestinians with the late Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Aba Eban (1915-2002) as international chairman. Vin the 1990s, Van Tijn as chairman and Mrs. Gelderblom-Lankhout as secretary became actively involved in the peace talks between Israelis and PLO members, leading to the Oslo Accords in 1993, which unfortunately did not bring the intended result - peace. In 2008, she came to know the Arab-West Foundation when the AWF participated in organising a delegation with representatives of Christian and Muslim organisations to Cairo in opposition to Geert Wilders’ film Fitna. The visit resulted in the formation of the Dutch Cairo Committee, later renamed Overleg Joden, Christenen, Moslims (OJCM , Consultation Forum of Jews, Christians, and Muslims) in which she remained active until today.
