"Marte Meo" - Maria Aarts's resource-oriented development method (NL)

Maria Aarts is a fascinating woman, a lively and charismatic personality who has the vision of awakening people's own strengths, which is exactly what "Marte Meo" is  about. (=on one's own strength). As early as in 1987 she developed a method according to which everyday-life or school interactions are first recorded by means of a simple video camera, no matter in which places people meet, interact or communicate. During subsequent evaluation (the so-called review), individual video sequences are carefully examined in order to identify the development potential of the person observed. The idea is to try and spot where a person's individual abilities are, step by step, picture for picture.

If "children's initiatives" are followed while "positive guiding" is provided, the observations and the results obtained will both be astonishing and impressive. Abilities and developmental progress which haven't been previously detected will be brought to light, old behaviour patterns changed and personal resources activated. This method can be effectively applied in kindergartens, schools, hospitals, care homes, couple therapy and many other fields. So far Marte Meo has been successfully introduced in more than 35 countries worldwide. The film shows how this video-assisted observation method is being applied in a particular kindergarten while demonstrating how easy it is to support development processes. Obvious difficulties are clearly outweighed by the strengths observed. In addition, there are various interviews not only featuring kindergarten teachers telling about their experiences with Marte Meo but also Maria Aarts herself who is explaining in detail and most wittily how her method contributes to successful communication and education