What you get from working with us
This page is written from your side of the table. What you receive, how an engagement runs, why an institution would choose a young foundation over a large consultancy — and, in the same place, the honest case against us.
Four kinds of organisation, four different pressures
Each of these arrives with a different problem, so each gets something different. Below is what that is, in plain terms — no reinvention of your work, no claims we cannot keep.
Municipalities
You guide newcomers from the brede intake through inburgering to participation and work. Where Yemeni and Arabic-speaking residents are part of that caseload, what you get is the community-specific context that makes intake conversations, guidance and outreach land: practical briefings for the people doing the work, facilitated dialogue with residents, community listening on a question you define, and honest feedback on what is and is not reaching anyone.
In practice this usually starts small — one team, one session, one specific question that has been bothering someone for months.
- Briefings for klantmanagers and brede-intake staff
- Context and practical adjustments for intake conversations
- Dialogue events with residents, facilitated
- Advisory notes for beleidsadviseurs
- Community listening on a defined question
- Straight feedback on outreach that is not reaching anyone
NGOs & refugee-support organisations
Your begeleiders carry the caseload and absorb the misunderstandings. What you get back is hours on the two things that cost them most: reaching families who are hard to reach, and the avoidable friction that arises when the only available reference points come from other communities.
We are not a replacement for VluchtelingenWerk or anyone else in this field, and we do not pitch ourselves as one. What you get is the specific knowledge layer under work you are already doing well.
- Context training for maatschappelijk begeleiders
- Co-facilitated outreach into the community
- Volunteer preparation and practical guidance
- Feedback loops between community and organisation
Schools & youth work
Parents who are read as uninterested are usually reading a different map. A school system that expects parents to walk in unannounced, question a teacher, and understand what an advies decides is not obvious to someone whose own schooling ran on other rules — and then a war closed it. What you get is staff who know what parents structurally miss, and parent evenings people actually attend.
We work with your staff on that baseline, and we co-host parent evenings where the school leads and we bridge. Never instead of the school — visibly alongside it.
- Staff sessions on the parents' baseline
- Co-hosted parent evenings, bilingual
- Scripts for sensitive conversations
- Civic dialogue with newcomer youth
- Role-model mentoring for pupils
- Practical routes to raise parent attendance
Employers
There are engineers, medics, teachers and traders in this community whose careers were interrupted by war, not by ability. There are also communication patterns that quietly cost you retention. What you get is a route to the first and a plain explanation of the second — both workable, and neither mysterious once someone explains it.
A short briefing over lunch is often enough to change how a team reads a colleague. That is a low bar to clear and a high return, which is exactly why we like it.
- Short briefings for teams and managers
- Communication patterns that affect retention
- Mentorship circle access for newcomer staff
- Talent-pathway sessions
Four steps, no surprises
Predictable by design. You should be able to see every stage of working with us before you commit to any of it.
A conversation
Thirty minutes, no commitment. You describe the problem; we say honestly whether we are the right partner for it. Sometimes the answer is no, and you get that answer for free.
Outcome: a shared read of the problemA written proposal
What we will do, with whom, when, and what it costs. One page where one page is enough. No retainers, no scope that grows quietly.
Outcome: an offerte you can take to your budget holderThe delivery
On the agreed date, with the agreed people, in the agreed format. Materials in Dutch. Sessions built so your team works rather than watches.
Outcome: something your team can use on MondayThe follow-up
Within 48 hours: the answers we parked, the handout, the feedback summary, and one concrete next step — or a clean ending if there is no next step. Both are fine.
Outcome: a written record, and no loose endsThree reasons — and one honest warning
You are being asked to trust a young foundation with something that matters. That deserves a real argument rather than a list of adjectives. Here is ours; the case against us follows straight after it.
Independence
No party, faction, donor, state or business controls us — and we have made that expensive to violate rather than easy to claim.
Evidence
We publish what we know, source it, date it, and mark what we do not know. You can check our work — that is the whole design.
Rootedness
Yemeni expertise and Dutch context in the same room, not a consultancy reading a community from the outside.
Independence you can actually verify
Every organisation in this field says it is independent. The question worth asking is: what has it made impossible for itself?
- Commission the question; nobody buys the answer. Nothing in an arrangement places conditions on our independence or on our conclusions.
- Every donation above €2,500 published. Amount and country of origin, in the annual report and on our governance page. Anonymous donations above €500 are declined.
- Equal distance to all Yemeni political actors. The same courteous, arm's-length posture to everyone. No co-branding, no hosted political platforms, no preferential access to anyone.
- Sanction screening on every partner and donor before we accept anything from them.
- Structural conflicts named in the register, not glossed. The permanent ones are recorded from day one and acknowledged in writing by every board member — and their binding effects are published on our governance page, including work we have ruled out for ourselves entirely.
Evidence, because assertion is cheap
There is no KIS study on this community. No SCP report. No Pharos dossier. No national self-organisation to ask. That absence is precisely why there is so little solid ground to work from — and why anyone can say anything about this community without fear of contradiction.
We are closing that gap in public. Our Feitenkaart is the first sourced factual baseline on the Yemeni community in the Netherlands. From next year, an annual report follows. Both are free, both carry their sources, and both say plainly where the data runs out.
The rule we hold ourselves to
Every claim is sourced, grounded in named lived expertise, or explicitly marked as unverified. If we do not know, we write that we do not know. It makes for less impressive slides and considerably more durable trust.
Rooted on both sides of the table
Community knowledge without institutional literacy produces insight nobody can act on. Institutional literacy without community roots produces confident material that is quietly wrong. The value is in holding both at once — and that is rare enough to be worth naming.
- Locally: breadth. We serve Yemeni and Arabic-speaking communities together, because that is how a neighbourhood actually looks and how your caseload actually reads.
- Nationally: depth. We are the only dedicated Yemeni-specialised civic platform we're aware of in the Netherlands. On this community, there is no deeper bench for an institution to go to.
- An advisory council that spans the community across regional and professional backgrounds, deliberately, so that "the community says" never means "one faction says".
- Delivery by people with standing — professionals from within the community, working in Dutch institutional reality rather than describing it.
The case against us
If we only made the case for ourselves, you would be right to discount it. So here is what an experienced budget holder should be worried about — from us, before you have to find it yourself.
- New, and transparent about it. A foundation in oprichting has no track record, no reference list and no years of delivery behind it. That is a real risk and no amount of good design changes it.
- Focused, not built for scale. We are not staffed for scale. If you need a supplier who can put six facilitators in six cities next month, that is not us, and we will say so rather than stretch.
- The population is small and under-registered. Per-municipality Yemeni numbers are low. If you need statistical representativeness, we will tell you the data cannot carry it — before you commission it, not after.
- Our spoken Dutch is a work in progress. Written materials are polished; for spoken delivery we co-facilitate or present in English where precision matters. You should know that before you book, not during.
We would rather you engage us knowing all of this. A partner who discovers the limitations later feels misled; a partner who was told upfront just makes a good decision. If any of the above is disqualifying for your situation, that is a legitimate answer and we will not argue with it.
Nobody gave us the right to speak about this community — and we do not claim it. We interpret, we do not represent, and this chair is open: come correct us where we are wrong.
Our standing answer, published in advanceThings budget holders ask us
Can you invoice us properly?
Yes. Tharan is a foundation in oprichting, and until the stichting's bank account is active, engagements are contracted and invoiced through a clearly disclosed interim route — stated in writing on every offerte and invoice, never hidden in a footnote. Activities and records transfer to the foundation on activation. We will explain the current status plainly before you commit to anything.
Are you insured?
Bedrijfsaansprakelijkheid and bestuurdersaansprakelijkheid are part of our incorporation sequence, as most municipal contracts require. Ask us where that stands on the day you need to know, and you will get the real answer rather than a reassuring one.
Do you need ANBI status to work with us?
No. ANBI matters for donations and some funds; it has no bearing on a municipal opdracht. Our application follows immediately after incorporation, and our publication page is already live on the governance page.
Will you present in Dutch?
Materials, handouts and slides are in polished Dutch. For spoken delivery we are straight with you: where precision matters more than performance, we present in English or co-facilitate with a Dutch-fluent colleague from our advisory network. We would rather be exactly understood than impressively vague.
Start with the problem, not the product
Tell us what is actually happening in your team or your caseload. Thirty minutes, no commitment, and an honest answer about whether we can help. The sensible way to test a new partner is one contained engagement with a clear deliverable — that is how we would like to start too.