To achieve its goals, the Nederlandse Debatbond (NDB) is looking for partners who have a warm heart for developing crucial skills, critical thinking, and social engagement among youths. Moreover, the NDB seeks ways to mobilise its specific backing to help other organisations in achieving their social goals. Seeing as all organisations have their own goals and characteristics, the NDB does not offer standard “packages” concerning partnerships. We do make a distinction between the three main ways of cooperation, where we can specifically look at what the NDB and a partner can mean for one another in each case.
Companies and ideological organisations often have goals that have a common ground with topics that are central discussion points in competitive debating. Everything that has social relevance is, clearly, a good candidate for a debate about solutions. As said, the Nederlandse Debatbond and its member societies organise tens of debate tournaments per year. Cooperation during such tournaments, such as the Dutch Debating Championships, offers the opportunity for organisations to put a spotlight on specific social concerns. As such, it is possible to make such concerns the topic of a debate, to speak to participants about certain questions, and various other methods can be devised to generate the attention of engaged youths for a certain cause.
The media attention for debating in general and especially for competitive debating is growing. In the meantime, media have to compete to engage mostly youths to their cause. The NDB is looking for media partners with an eye for social opinion generation. An example is the German debate competition, where Die Zeit and ZDF are the most important partners. Next to reporting about and cooperating with the competitive debating scene, a media partnership also offers a special possibility to contribute to opinion generation. More and more successful debaters, such as Lars Duursma, Rosanne Hertzberger, Roderik van Grieken, Victor Vlam, and many others, fulfil a role at the forefront of opinion generation in social discourse. Competitive debating teaches participants to critically assess social problems and to clearly and persuasively communicate opinions and solutions. Especially that combination of traits is crucial to media. Together, we can look at possibilities to unionize the skills of debaters with the wishes of the media.
Thanks to the high frequency of activities organised by the NDB and its member societies (and through the partnerships we make), the NDB has a large and close-knitted network that regularly meets. Apart from the many debate tournaments, the NDB also is known to organise networking drinks where members, alumni, partners, and other interested people come together. Moreover, the NDB can organise activities for its partners around tournaments to closely involve them with competitive debating. Networking partners are organisations and companies that do not have an explicit social cause but who do want to be a part of the network. Networking partners are invited to all activities that are organised by the Nederlandse Debatbond. Recruiters or other employees are, therefore, welcome during tournaments or other meetings. On top of this, networking partners can link their name to the NDB as a whole or to one or multiple of our activities. Next to this, there are of course various other means that can be utilised to offer a partner an explicit position in the network.
For more information, you can contact Axel Hirschel, board member of the Nederlandse Debatbond. You can read a flyer (Dutch) with information about our backing and activities, as well as options for you as a partner of the Debatbond.