Inge Volleberg, researcher, writes in Annual Report 2025.:
As a sibling of someone with an intellectual disability working at Inclusion Europe, I have no traditional ‘work-life’ balance.
So much of my life relates to my work, and so much of my work relates to my life. This became even more clear to me when I got sick in 2024 and could not work for a while. I hated it.
So, when I was able to get back to work at the start of 2025, I was so excited. But it was, and still is, on a part-time basis, which meant I had to find a new balance.
Predictable…
What should I work on? What deserves my attention and energy? What gives me energy? How can I do my work in a way that is sustainable and has impact? The answers came in two parts. The first was predictable, the second was more of a surprise to me.
The Inclusion Indicators is the predictable answer to the questions above.
I love working on the Inclusion Indicators. It gives me so much energy to be working on fixing a problem like the lack of data on people with intellectual disabilities. It is not perfect, we still have to work with incomplete and missing data, but it has impact.
I have been working on the Inclusion Indicators since the first report in 2023. That year was very much a period of trial and error. Seeing what worked and what did not, which questions we had to ask to get the answers we were looking for, and discussing with members what we can improve. For 2024, we had already made many improvements. But for 2025, I wanted to make the last ‘big’ adjustments, to get the survey and the report in the shape we had always envisioned. So, that’s where I put most of my focus.
…surprising
Siblings’ advocacy was the more surprising answer to the questions above.
Of course, as a sibling myself, I already shared about my experiences here and there. But I realised that I wanted to take it more seriously. To take my advocacy to the next level, so to say. Luckily, at Inclusion Europe I get opportunities to do just that.
I got the chance to do a podcast for Inclusion Europe Radio, to write an article for the website, to host focus groups with siblings for a series of essays that will be published in 2026, and to travel to different places to speak about my experiences as a sibling.
I am so grateful that I can combine my work and my life, that I can both work on something as impactful as the Inclusion Indicators, while also working on something that is so personal as advocating for siblings.
Like I said in the beginning, it is pretty much impossible for me to have a standard ‘work-life’ balance, and I love it.
Read the Annual Report 2025.