Mattias Buysens

Current occupation

Freelance trainer

Work experience

For me it all started as animator on a playground somewhere in west flanders, Belgium. I did this for 7 years, and was lucky to work my first job here as support person for the volunteers.
From then on I knew I wanted to work with young people, groups in a supportive coaching way.

Throughout the years I worked as:
- Coördinator of playground and afterschool care (few months 2009-2010)
- Day care worker with refugees (few months 2010)
- Groupworker/facilitator for youth (13-18y) on groupdynamics, relationships, wellbeing, sexuality, their future, meaning of 'life', .. mainly based on Experiential learning. The last 1,5 years I also was a mentor for some of my colleagues.
- youth worker for Beroepenhuis. A place where students of elementary school (11-12 year), could come for half a day to get to know different professions by trying them out.
- Educational worker for a small NGO. Supporting a youth organisation that organizes intercultural exchanges between Belgium and Senegal/Burkina Faso for youth between 16 and 18 years old + working on the topic of substainable farming.
- Coördinator of Kiemkracht. A small festival on substainability of labo vzw. An organisation focussing on critical citizenship (P. Freire, G. Boal, J. Macy, ..) (few months 2017)
- Volunteers Coördinator Climate Express. Working as only payed worker in this climate citizenmovement supporting volunteers and the actions organised by us ( Climate March of 100.000 people and Human chain around government buildings in Brussels).
- Lecturer/teacher in higher education (Graduate Social works). The direction I teach in is mainly for students who prefer to learn by doing, instead of sitting behind their desk. We have 2 days of class, and 3 days of internship. I give two courses and support (and evaluate) students during their internship. (From 09/2020 untill 09/2023 )

In the main time I was/am working as freelance trainer:
- Jint vzw (NA BE-FL). Working on online project during covid: WhatsUp as support/coach for Europeers developping this tool. Afterwards as trainer for NA-Fl to prepare and facilitate this online moments developped to support volunteers during the covid period and making sure they still feel connected with others. This sessions also took place in different city's when the lock down was over to reconnect volunteers after this difficult period.
- Freelance trainer/developper of KA2 programme Belonging to Nature: The heart of wellbeing.

During all these years their was also a lot voluntary work done for:
- Don Bosco in international projects as groupleader to Zambia (2 times) and India (1 time), and in giving an animator course to zambian youthworkers.
- Time-out projects for youth. Hikes of 5 days within Belgium as time out for boys.
- Working on campaigns to mobilize people for Climate actions: 10.000 Belgians to Paris and bicycle tour for 360 people from Brussels to Bonn ( coördinator)
- ....

All the above experiences are important to me to mention, because they brought me to where I am now. And to the topics that are important to me at this point of my life: Wellbeing, Substainability, Coaching, (System) Change, Personal Growth, Diversity, intercultural learning and community building.

These topics I focus on in my work as trainer/facilitator.