Aug22136 39. Educational Changemaker of the Year 2025 Beeldig Brein helps children, young people and adults with their learning capabilities by delving into how different people learn differently, and highlighting how one teaching method does not simply suit everyone. Natasja Esmeijer tells us more about the company and the science behind it following a Benelux Enterprise Awards win. Founded by Natasja Esmeijer, Beeldig Brein’s clients are mostly visual thinking people who are struggling because they learn in a different way. Natasja, who started the business 12 years ago from scratch, helps them understand their brain and, by helping them with their homework, she teaches them how to use their own talents. “Some only need a few instructions, some are coming for years because of their dyslexia, dyscalculia or language disorder,” she elaborates. “And, of course, a lot of highly gifted people come because of their visual thinking brain and exceptional need for knowledge and high sensitivity.” Natasja openly admits that she herself was struggling to find a way to help these people. Being a verbal thinker, she really wanted to know why these children learn differently. After following some courses and reading a lot of books in order to collect data and facts, Natasja found her own solution to handling the different ways of learning by applying that knowledge, and also from the experiences of adult visual thinkers - the parents of her young clients. Together with her colleague, Miranda Meijer, Natasja set up Beelddenkende Brein and together the two make the knowledge about the visual thinking brain available through both online and physical courses, instructing teachers, parents and adult visual thinkers. “If you support visual thinking children in learning through understanding the letters, words and sentences from before they go to school, they do not develop learning problems,” Natasja elaborates. “If we change the way we teach visual thinking children, they have a good base to learn and they will keep their talent, expand them and will turn into the student they can be.” Natasja and Miranda differentiate their firm by looking at/approaching people by recognising their unique mix of personal elements. The way we are starts with the dominance of our brains and senses, known as the dominance profile. This dominance-profile is the most important base of our learning and goes beyond visual and verbal thinking. It is complemented with our intelligence, possible neurodiversity, gender and other traits we may have. This mix, explains Natasja, is the starting point of who we all are. In the Benelux region, education is failing, she further elaborates. In the Netherlands, 70,000 children are home, sick from school, with a further 200,000 children suffering from learning problems, not because of their lack of ability but because they do not get what they need in the first few years of education. “Schools only see the problem in the child and not in the educational system itself,” she states. “Our system is automated and gives teachers less and less autonomy to teach. The teachers themselves face the same problem. They do not have the knowledge of the learning brain and not enough time to give the children what they need.” This, in turn, has a knock-on effect in later life and Natasja is seeing a lot of adults who are having problems in their jobs because they do not know how their brain can function properly. “The dominance profile is your base during your whole life, not only in school,” she continues. “So, we have also a lot of answers for managers and companies who are trying to make the best use of the talents available in their employees.” Recently, Beeldig Brein triumphed in the Benelux Enterprise Awards 2025, receiving the much-coveted title of Educational Changemaker of the Year 2025 for its efforts, and its dedication to the education system. As the future beckons, Natasja is determined to stay on course and help people to understand how their brains works, and learns. She is doing this through a series of books, of which there are two already in publication, and helping more than a thousand children to learn in a different way. The third book is due out in October of this year and will delve more into the core of the learning brain, highlighting the difference between the developing verbal thinking and visual thinking brain, in order to support children from kindergarten age. “I am planning to create teaching material to be used by parents or in the class room that contains the basic of what is missing out in the system,” she states. “We are not telling parents to do things differently, we are telling them how to teach differently by giving them the reason, as well as the concrete material to start with.” Contact Details Contact: Natasja Esmeijer Company: Beeldig Brein Web Address: www.beeldigbrein.nl / www. natasjaesmeijer.nl Contact: Natasja Esmeijer Company: Beeldig Brein Web Address: www.beeldigbrein.nl / www.natasjaesmeijer.nl AIM-Jun25119
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