The Presence Foundation
The Presence Foundation (in Dutch: Stichting Presentie) is a non-profit and non-governmental knowledge institute on presence and relational caring. In 2004, it was founded by Prof Andries Baart. He became known in the Low Countries after publishing ‘Een theorie van de presentie (A theory of presence)’ in 2001 as the ‘spiritual father of the presence theory’. The Presence Foundation is registered as a research organization in the ROR registry: https://ror.org/05a778a43.
The work of the Presence Foundation consists of:
- development of and research into (good) care practices from a presence perspective;
- promoting presence in lectures and publications and by maintaining our network, as much as possible in interaction with care recipients and clients;
- teaching presence through lectures, learning trajectories, seminars, courses, coaching et cetera, and forming a powerful framework that can set up and support practices of presence;
- (providing help with) the establishment of concrete practices of presence, setting up innovative pilots, stimulating care innovation and providing support where necessary;
- acquiring sound knowledge of how presence works (‘best practice’), what it requires, what it delivers and how it can be promoted;
- disseminating this knowledge by doing research, issuing publications, publishing a database, et cetera;
- taking part in the public debate based on this knowledge and practices, and based on the basic philosophy of presence (about good care, for example);
- establishing and maintaining an endowed chair for Presence and Relational Caring, in order to further develop and teach presence and relational caring at an (international) academic level;
- In addition, the establishment and maintenance of a lectorate (university of applied sciences) and, if possible, a practorate (secondary vocational education), so that presence and relational caring can be further developed and taught as broadly as possible at different levels.
