Both ENDS

News / 4 July 2024

Karin van Boxtel new director of Both ENDS

Karin van Boxtel (35) is the new director of environment and human rights organisation Both ENDS. Karin has been running the organisation temporarily, together with Annelieke Douma, since the departure of the previous director, Danielle Hirsch. She has now been appointed permanently to make Both ENDS stronger and more future-proof. Karin will take up her new post on 1 September. Until then, she will continue as co-director on an interim basis.

“We are delighted that Karin will be continuing as director,” says Leida Rijnhout, chair of the Both ENDS Board. “After a thorough procedure, the entire Board and staff sounding board group were unanimous that she is the right person to lead Both ENDS. We were confident that her strategic thinking, political insights, engagement and motivational leadership would enable Karin to lead Both ENDS through the tumultuous times in the current Dutch political climate. Together with our partner organisations around the world and of course the team in Utrecht, Both ENDS continues to defend human rights and environmental justice worldwide.”

Karin has been working at Both ENDS for ten years in various functions. She is well-known as an advocate of a sustainable food system, which calls for different funding channels and fair trade. “Decision-making power is unfortunately still very unequally distributed globally,” she says. “And that is the key to change: distributing that power more fairly and working together on good solutions. Both ENDS pursues that goal by strengthening partner organizations around the world, to enable them to participate in decision-making. That can only be achieved by placing feminist values and climate justice at the centre and by strengthening the leadership of women and young people. I think it’s really good that Both ENDS itself is also organized along these lines. Allowing people to take their own responsibility and make their own decisions distributes decision-making power and stimulates leadership within our own organisation.”

Connecting people for change

Both ENDS’s strength is its gigantic international partner network of almost 500 women’s organisations, farmers’ organisations, environment and human rights defenders, and youth groups. “Unfortunately, their voices are still far too often silenced, and that is no longer acceptable in these times,” says Karin, who is starting at a time when the Netherlands is taking a different course in its foreign policy. “Now especially, it is important to maintain an open, international perspective and to ensure that what the Netherlands has a real positive impact elsewhere. Only together can we achieve stability and security in the world. Let us protect democratic values and solidarity so that, as Both ENDS and the Netherlands, we can continue to support those fighting for a fair, sustainable and better world.”

Biography: from Africa to the Veluwe

Karin started at Both ENDS in 2015, working on sustainable land use and management, from a background in International Development Studies and experience in Senegal, Burundi and Cameroon. Shortly afterwards, she was appointed project leader of the Fair, Green and Global Programme, where she expanded her substantive focus to public financing and fair trade, often in relation to the food system. In addition, she is active in funders’ networks and is a close follower of political and policy developments in The Hague. She lives on the edge of the Veluwe National Park and, as a lover of the outdoors, she enjoys working in her vegetable garden and walking in the woods with her dog, and prefers to shop at local producers and farmers.

 

Download Press Release (pdf)

For more information

Read more about this subject