One of my favourite films is The Big Short. Not because it is about money, or banks, or even the financial crisis itself, but because it so painfully clearly shows how collective blindness works. Everything needed to see the disaster coming was laid out in plain sight. And yet, almost no one really looked. And those who did were ignored, dismissed, or not taken seriously. In the end, it was not the financial elite who paid the highest price, but millions of ordinary people, while the blame was later effortlessly shifted elsewhere.
When I was younger, I long believed that CEOs, board members, or prime ministers were, above all, brilliant strategists. People with oversight, vision, and answers. People who knew where things were heading. I now know that this image is mostly comforting, but rarely true. Direction does not emerge at a drawing board, and certainly not in PowerPoint. Direction emerges when you learn to look at a reality that, sometimes uncomfortably, keeps presenting itself to you.
In our case, our fellows and residents show the way.
Not because they walk around with plans or solutions, but because anyone who listens to their stories, who sees where they come from and where they got stuck, sees something emerge that cannot be ignored.
"Direction emerges when you learn to look at a reality that, sometimes uncomfortably, keeps presenting itself to you."
I have written about this before, but it continues to strike me how little the questions of families, fellows and residents actually differ from one another. Regardless of whether they speak Dutch, German, French, Danish, or something else entirely. Their questions are rarely about treatment models or structures. They are about feeling at home somewhere. About safety. About the desire to be useful, while not yet knowing how — despite the persistent misconception that young people simply want to be lazy. They are about not having to live in constant worry. About not being alone for a while. And perhaps even more importantly: about not having to do everything alone.
That is also the reason why we, as the Yes We Can Healthcare Group, are increasingly moving beyond the Netherlands. Not out of expansionist ambition, not because we want to grow for growth’s sake, but because we really only need to look. Look at where it is needed. And if you take that seriously, “strategy” tends to follow naturally.
In Basel, Copenhagen and London, governments — sometimes decisively, sometimes struggling with their own bureaucracy — are working to make Yes We Can Clinics possible. And soon we will welcome an organisation from Germany that is exploring whether a Yes We Can Clinics Deutschland could come into existence. Not because we want to plant our flag there, let alone drive a colourful phoenix into the ground, but because young people there need the same things as they do here. This applies not only to our clinics, but equally to supported living, as we provide through Zero&Sano.
"Their questions are rarely about treatment models or structures. They are about feeling at home somewhere. And more importantly: about not having to do everything alone."
What continues to strike me year after year is what happens when people visit us. Whether they are insurers, sollicitors, general practitioners, youth workers or other healthcare professionals. They do not really need to listen to us. They listen to the fellows. To what went wrong in their lives. To what changed when someone stopped trying to “fix” them and started taking them seriously.
Almost every guest says the same thing afterwards: their amazement at how sharply fellows are able to articulate their own journey. Sometimes with a vocabulary no policy paper could compete with, sometimes in sentences that still grate or even hurt — but always hitting the mark. From a life that once felt hopeless, through what they learned at Yes We Can, to how they intend to apply that learning in the life ahead of them. More than once, those conversations also become a mirror for the person sitting across from them — something that often lingers long after. The same applies to me, even after all these years.
In 2025, we were once again able to support more than 1,300 families. More than 1,300 families who entrusted us at a time when trust is often scarce. More than 1,300 fellows who are now, each in their own way, passing on what they themselves received — and worked incredibly hard for.
2025 was not a light year. That hardly needs explanation. Once again, we saw how social media can amplify problems — sometimes subtly, sometimes explosively and outright dangerously. Things you can hardly defend yourself against, and for which we repeatedly call on the companies behind these platforms, who often prefer to look the other way. At the same time, I occasionally saw something else: groups of young people deliberately stepping back. Choosing less noise. Less screen. More reality. If that marks the beginning of a broader trend, it may well be one of the most hopeful signals of this moment.
"The biggest mistakes rarely stem from a lack of information, but from our decision to look away."
Beyond our walls, the world was restless too. War remained painfully close. Polarisation crept ever further under the skin of daily life. Elections became more about fear than ideas. Young people sense this instinctively — often precisely because they say politics does not interest them. Perhaps that is why something keeps standing out to me about our fellows and residents. They are not necessarily looking for grand, sweeping narratives. No ideology. No being right.
They are looking for warmth, love, connection, and a place to feel at home — whether within their own family or a healthy circle of friends.
The lesson of The Big Short is ultimately a simple one: the biggest mistakes rarely stem from a lack of information, but from our decision to look away.
If there is one thing I have learned, it is that healthcare works the same way. A future strategy above all requires learning to listen and to look carefully. Because if you are willing to truly look, our families and fellows will always show the way.
They did so yesterday.
They do so today.
And if we do not look away, they will do so tomorrow as well.
Wishing everyone a peaceful turn of the year, and a truly meaningful 2026.
