Trainers
Bie Vanseveren and Lynn Gastmans
Bie and Lynn (Flanders, Belgium) are both senior mediators and they have been part of the i-RESTORE Advisory Group, sharing their expertise with practice and training throughout the project. Both were invited, together with Belinda Hopkins, to deliver the EFRJ Summer School on Child friendly Restorative Justice (Gdańsk, 2019).
Bie Vanseveren, graduated in Ortho-pedagogy, started her professional career by working with people with disabilities. Until 2020, she worked in the field of restorative justice with adolescent delinquents and victims, more specifically as a mediator and Family Group Facilitator in the Alba vzw. She is one of the pioneers who implemented Family Group Conferencing in Belgium and trained many other facilitators. Now she works as a practical supervisor in the Familial Sciences program in the Co-University Odisee, where she also teaches the restorative methodology. On behave of this, she is also an independent mediator in youth care, dealing with conflicts between clients and the institutions.
During all these years working with youngsters, she noticed it isn’t always easy to talk. Sometimes as result of the difficulties of the case or situation, but also because talking isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. That’s how she got more engaged in working with materials and images. Over time, she has developed different strategies and started sharing her knowledge with colleagues and people interested in these method.
Lynn Gastmans graduated as a criminologist and sexologist. Currently she is following a postgraduate programme in Gestalt therapy and in forensic diagnostics. Her work experiences can all be situated in the forensic field: at a youth detention center, reintegration of ex-prisoners on probation and welfare work inside the Brussels prisons. That’s also where she got drawn into the restorative justice field. For seven years she worked as a victim-offender mediator and family group conference moderator in Belgium (Brussels), with juvenile offenders. Currently she is working with adults in a forensic setting (people who got involved in assault, domestic violence and sex offences).
