About us

At Breakout Bandits we challenge you to go outside with your team, friends or family, get to know each other better and experience an adventure together.

We do this in the form of games and adventures that stimulate, connect and make you wonder. In this way we try to make the world a bit more beautiful.

We work in a social way and in this way make the world a more beautiful place.

Social entrepreneurship

We are a social enterprise whose primary goal is to make a social impact. Making a profit is a secondary goal. We try to make impactful games and adventures. We devise, create and operate these with people who have a distance from the labor market.

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Affordable for everyone

We offer a discount for teams or people with a small budget. We’ll make a custom quote for you.

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100% satisfaction guarantee

If you are not completely satisfied with your game or adventure, you will get 100% of your money back.

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No hassle when canceling

Do you have to cancel? No problem. We have friendly cancellation policies.

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Free Surprise Road Trips

Twice a year we organize a free surprise road trip for someone who could use it.

Impactful games and adventures that stimulate, connect and amaze

We love to excite and connect people and are happy when participants are amazed by something they experience during our games and adventures. As far as we are concerned, this can go much deeper than you might normally be used to during a team building or during an activity on a family day.

We believe that if you really get to know each other better, there is better cooperation, there is more understanding for each other, the conversations during lunch become more meaningful, there is more concern for each other… We believe that if you experience an adventure in which all when your colleagues, friends or family put you in the spotlight, it does something to you, deep inside. And so it may be that one of our games or adventures contributes to making the world a little more beautiful.

Care farm for intellectuals

At Breakout Bandits we have a passion for those who want to, but don’t always succeed. Those who struggle with life at a young age. Young people and young adults who have the brains, but somehow get stuck. Whether it is because of illness, such as Long Covid, a Burn Out or because they are a little different and are somewhere on the Autistic Spectrum, for example.

We believe in young people who want to, but get stuck because they cannot participate in the standard system that society imposes on them. We give them a workplace, a place where things are different. We work with a lot of personal attention, without stress and in a homely environment. It’s like working from the kitchen table with a friendly group of like-minded people.

Lovingly and somewhat jokingly, we call ourselves a Care Farm for Intellectuals.

If you are curious about how we implement this way of working, read more about our “care farm for intellectuals” or contact us.

Meet the Founders

Wouter van der Zeijden

Wouter founded Breakout Bandits and has since taken on the role of Creative Director. He is responsible for all creative event concepts. Connect with Wouter on LinkedIn

Esther van der Zeijden-Jansen

Esther is involved part-time in addition to her work as a cheese consultant. Within Breakout Bandits she combines sales with a personal touch in her role as Head of Customer Relations. Connect with Esther on LinkedIn

Based on their experience in youth work, they are jointly responsible for providing guidance to employees who are reintegrating within Breakout Bandits, catching their breath or trying to figure out how to let their creativity flow again after a difficult period. Wouter focuses more on substantive guidance and management. Esther looks after people, asks how things are going, and takes time for a good conversation.

Passion for young people who are stuck

Would you like to read more about how the passion for young people arose? Wouter wrote a blog about it: “How a missing friend and a group of teenagers inspired me to start an event agency“

Wouter and Esther experiences getting stuck and the literal and figurative pain you go through when you are forced to slow down or even stop completely. Read more about this in the blog “Your pain is your ministry“.

What do we want to grow towards?

When we sit at the big table in the Banditshouse, the topic regularly comes up: how do we move forward, where do we want to go? The words below provide an insight into the conversations that take place around the table. It is not a clear-cut vision. We don’t have a fully developed business plan yet, but it gives an impression of a direction we would like to go in. Read along, think along, and maybe you will feel called to participate?

Where are we now?

As Breakout Bandits, we are a social company that focuses on organizing games and adventures that stimulate, connect and make you wonder. We devise and organize the games and adventures with young people and young adults who are at a distance from the labor market.

Right now we mainly focus on people, where we believe that if they receive the right attention and can work in a healthy and calm working environment, they can recover. We provide guidance with 2 people who have experience as youth workers, but, for example, do not have an orthopedagogical background. We also expect that employees can provide for their daily maintenance through a benefit or, for example, a (former) employer who pays them to reintegrate into a second track.

Making Breakout Bandits grow and employees flourish

We see 2 key growth areas:

Continue to grow commercially. In this way we generate income that we can use to hire specialized staff members who can supervise the employees.
Hire specialized staff. This way we can also hire employees who require more complex care and who can, for example, also bring their own PGB budget. This allows us to hire more staff members and therefore continue to grow.

We position ourselves as a social enterprise, not a healthcare institution or educational institution. Naturally, we can work closely with other institutions in healthcare and education. However, we want to keep the focus on a creative, individual way of doing business in which we want to offer young people and young adults a workplace who got stuck, in the firm belief that we can help them flourish again through the right attention and a healthy working environment.

Creating and organizing impactful games and adventures together

We want to grow towards helping young people and young adults to devise, program, and develop their own games they can market and exploit. The games are released under the Breakout Bandits label and platforms.

All employees work on their own project, but we also encourage them to help each other. Some are better at programming than others. In this way they help each other, learn to work together and discover multiple disciplines. However, the focus on their own project also gives them a clearly defined scope. Coming up with a game concept yourself ensures that there is no stress from a customer who wants that the game is ready within a certain time.

We focus on young people and young adults who have an intrinsic motivation to develop a game themselves and are therefore motivated to get started with it. We help them with developing methods and tools and motivate them when things are not going well. They must apply themselves to come and work with us. The application procedure consists of the presentation of a game idea. We do not judge on the content, but primarily on motivation.

Homely, healthy working environment

We work in a homely, safe atmosphere in small groups: as if you were running your own business from your own kitchen table. We do not work in office buildings, but in homely furnished buildings, where a maximum of 8 people work. If more employees are added, we will rent a new building. In addition to working, we eat and exercise together. In this way, we provide an environment in which the employees work on self-confidence and health in a safe structure.

The goal

The goal is that employees will flourish. We focus on ensuring that they are ready to work for another employer, start their own business or become employed as a staff member at Breakout Bandits. It does not matter at what pace this happens, it can take several months to years.

Make a social impact, come work with us

Working as a staff member

If you read this and get excited, please contact us. We are still looking for all kinds of people who can contribute to the growth of Breakout Bandits based on their passion and expertise.

Think of healthcare professionals who work in healthcare, want to leave the healthcare sector because of all the stress and rules, but would like to guide young people and young adults. Think of people with a passion for commerce and marketing, who are enthusiastic about helping a startup grow further, but who want to make more of a social impact. Think of game developers who find it a challenge to develop games together with young people and young adults, to get more satisfaction from their work.

We could go on for a while. We want to grow, we have ambition, and for that we need good people. Do you see yourself working at Breakout Bandits? Take the shot, contact us. We are open to all kinds of collaborations: from being involved voluntarily every now and then, to having a part-time “side hussle” in addition to your job at a large corporate or all-in at Bandits.

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Working as an employee (young people or young adults)

Do you have a child, or are you someone who got stuck or is in danger of getting stuck? We can currently offer a workplace to young people and young adults who can provide for their daily maintenance through benefits or, for example, a (former) employer who pays them to reintegrate into a second track.

We are open to new employees. Please feel free to contact us and come and have a cup of coffee in the Bandits House.

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We officially exist

Yes, we really exist. We are registered with the Chamber of Commerce under the trade name Breakout Bandits with Chamber of Commerce number 84049863 and VAT number NL003912996B26. Our postal address is Leeweg 32, Berkel en Rodenrijs in the Netherlands. The Bandits House is located at Wilhelminstraat 17 in Berkel en Rodenrijs in the Netherlands.