“In the year 2000, Marlies van der Kroft, Cristin de Vries and I came together to discuss the recent developments in the disability movement in the Netherlands. The three of us agreed, there was huge untapped potential and therefore we established the Dutch Coalition on Disability and Development. Disability inclusion was our core goal from the very beginning and we aimed to build capacity in the field of development. The strength of DCDD was the fact it was a coalition: we had both individual and organizational participants and we got a lot of support in the early years. We formed different working groups and new partnerships, there were constant discussions about new developments and there was a high level of commitment – a movement was born.”
