Drawing to Health

Social Enterprise

Irene Weerkamp is a young entrepreneur who follows her own path. With her experience as educationalist, teacher and pedagogue, programs have been developed in order to improve and increase the personal development of employees and teams within companies and the related productivity.

Drawing to Health arose from the need for mapping out psychosocial and emotional qualities, the so-called soft skills, of employees. The actual personal traits are reflected in eye-hand coordination and its affects at neurological level. Qualities that often go unnoticed during recruitment and selection procedures. Scientific research has shown that visual language and drawing analyses provide insight into human behaviour. Drawing to Health has developed visual language programs, in which drawings and drawing analyses provide the team and the company with insight into employees’ soft skills.

Offering safety, offering trust, committing and taking responsibility.
That is how Drawing to Health gives trainings and guides people. During its first years, the company mainly focused on the demand from ICT companies. A company’s growth can cause frictions within a team. With the visual language programs by Drawing to Health, every employee makes a drawing concerning one selected archetype (human, animal, house…). The drawings are then analysed. The results are discussed within the team and result in insight, understanding and personal development plans, so the company can grow further.

Visual language
Irene has achieved good results in recent years. This has been noticed by European organisations and companies. A collaboration with Erasmus+ Education & Youth has led to new contacts with universities. In collaboration with Saxion Applied Sciences, trainings are being given at the university of Emden in Germany. Youth workers in Poland, France and Greece are supported and guided by Drawing to Health programs, so they can guide young people in their self-development process. The international partners are working together and are developing a tool for soft skills for young people in collaboration with the Altinbas University Istanbul Turkey. Initially focused on South Europe because of the high unemployment rate. ‘Young people are the future!’ One step, one jump… for Drawing to Health.