What a night. To celebrate 10 years of Follow This, we packed the house for an evening of talks, music, and workshops about the power of people who dare. People with ideas and the drive to make an impact.
Ten years ago, Mark van Baal walked into a Shell shareholder meeting and asked for change. He got 2.7% of the vote. A decade later, the movement he started is internationally recognized as a force driving real change in the oil and gas industry.
To mark that milestone, the Follow This Festival brought together activists, artists, lawyers, musicians, and marine biologists, proof that change starts with a single person who refuses to wait. They came from refugee camps in Kenya, from petrochemical plants in Congo, from plastic-choked seas between Amsterdam and Oslo.
Different paths. The same persistent belief that action speaks louder than words. Ten years in, that's still what we believe. The work continues. Thank you for being part of it.
Shell told him to come back next year. He did.
Ten years ago, Mark stood up alone at a Shell shareholder meeting and asked for climate action. He got 2.7% of the vote.
Today, one in five shareholders votes with Follow This. The Guardian calls it “the most impactful shareholder in Big Oil.”
Mark didn’t wait for a movement, he started it. How? “Trust your first followers. They’re the ones who turn a lonely idea into something unstoppable.”
He started at a kitchen table. Where will you start?
A decolonial journey
Brenda Odimba is a Belgian-Congolese chemical engineer and prominent decolonial activist. As the founder of Mwasi, she champions women’s empowerment and grassroots peace initiatives in Congo while advocating for migrant rights in Belgium.
Her message was direct: climate change is not a standalone crisis. It is a symptom of colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism. “Real change does not happen in conferences. It happens in communities.” Waiting for solutions from outside is not a mindset, she argued, it is a system. And the only way to break it is to organise from the ground up.
He surfs against the current, literally
Merijn Tinga windsurfs the world on a board built from plastic waste. As the Plastic Soup Surfer and marine biologist, he proved that one person can shift entire systems.
He surfed from the Netherlands to England to win support for a Dutch bottle deposit law. The result: 80% less litter. He kept going: Oslo to London, up the Seine to Paris, where he met the mayor to push for a French deposit system. Next stop: Rome, and a meeting with the Pope.
His lesson: “Thinking differently is not hard. Doing differently — that’s what counts.”
The lawyer who builds clubs in refugee camps
Jan van Hövell walked away from corporate law to build sports clubs inside refugee camps. His Amsterdam-based organisation Klabu — Swahili for “club” — turns a simple idea into real change.
It started with a single second-hand container in Kenya. Today, Klabu runs ten clubhouses across four continents. A sportswear brand followed, became a hit, and now funds new locations. By 2030, the goal is fifty clubhouses reaching two million refugees worldwide.
Jan isn’t running an aid organisation. He’s running a club. That’s the whole point.
Music builds a community
Orville Breeveld is a Surinamese-Dutch musician, entrepreneur, and founder of the South East Jazz Festival who uses music to keep forgotten histories alive.
He arrived still recovering from a fall at the Concertgebouw, but giving up is not in his nature. He opened with a quiet challenge: “The lens you wear is the world you see.” Drawing on overlooked Black composers and thinkers, he argued that change starts not with new information, but with a new way of looking. Adjust the lens, and what seems impossible starts to shift.
In search of hope
Moderator Harm Edens is a TV presenter and ambassador for WWF Netherlands — known for sharp questions, dry wit, and the rare gift of making big problems feel personal rather than paralyzing.
Harm shared a story from the late Jane Goodall, who spent more than seventy years protecting wildlife and its habitats. Her lesson: don’t feel like a single drop on a burning plate — because thousands of drops cool it down. “With a tsunami of drops, we change the plate.”
Ten years of Follow This is proof she was right.
