The editorial team of this Nyenrode Kids website is composed of the children of the Nyenrode exchange program between 1980 and 1981
Tesa’s daughter, Annie

Karim’s daughter, Sophia
Sophia shares these thoughts from her Foreword about her dad [To read more, click here.]:
Before I left for Kenya, my dad handed me a book of stories about his childhood days in Nairobi. I am going to quote something he said about the tribal Kikuyu ladies because it gave me an insight into Africa:
“The Kikuyu vegetable ladies, they mix with the earth.
They don’t wear shoes because they are poor. Or, is it because they are rich?
Perhaps if they wore shoes their bare feet wouldn’t mix back in with the fertile rich red soil in the shamba where they grow their vegetables and sell them door to door. And if their feet stopped mixing with the earth, they may forget who they are, where they came from, and where they will return and mix back into.”
Carsten’s daughter, Callie
As I stumble my way through my twenties, I find myself inevitably talking, walking, speaking, and in general going about my life exactly the way my parents have.
It could be argued where the evidence of this is most apparent because there is so much of it.
Thanks to growing up in the Henningsen household, I am not easily angered, always have the cleanest kitchen sink you’ve ever seen, and offer up a lot more philosophical comments when I do choose to speak than practical ones. In appearance and demeanor alike, I take after my parents in a way both the nature and the nurture teams could get excited about. I would agree with both, but will take this opportunity to focus on learned behavior and tradition.
Growing up around my Dad’s Nyenrode group has been an influence that has had a major impact on me.
Watching the members of this close-knit circle travel across the world thirty years after they first met not only inspired me to study abroad my junior year of college, but has played a role in the bond of my own group of friends and roommates: three people I would love so much further than to the moon and back – the very kind of love I am capable of because I have been fortunate enough to bear witness to it from the time I was very small. There are so many typical things we learn from our parents, but I consider myself very fortunate to have been taught by example that friends are the family we make, and that distance means so little when someone (or in this case, many someones!) mean so much.
Thank you to all of you for your great love for one another – I carry it in my own relationships every day.