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isa first
started in the UK after a film production company based in
Leeds went to the US to film isa's Young Person's Experience.
The film crew were so impressed and inspired by their experience
that they came back determined to introduce isa into the UK.
This resulted in the creation of the first isa Experience
inthe UK in 1986. Since then isa has grown in the UK and now
has a number of events running each year, with a strong community
of isa graduates and assistants the length and breadth of
the country.
The first isa Experience took
place in Florida in 1976, written and delivered by its founder,
Ole Larsen. He didn't want it to become a large organisation
with all the trappings of big business like marketing executives,
advertising and offices in the city. His philosophy was quite
simple: if graduates of the Experience wanted it to continue,
then it was their responsibility to create the next one. If
they didn't want it to continue, it could disappear without
trace and without any capital investment to dispose of. It
has continued in this way for over 30 years and spread to the UK,
Sweden and most recently to Australia - simply because people
who came to do it recommended it and invited their family
members, friends and work colleagues.
Ole set up the assisting process
to support isa graduates to create the next isa Experience
and to continue the work they started in the Experience and
put the information into practice in their daily lives. So
between Experiences, isa assistants commit themselves to doing
the necessary work to create an isa Experience. We meet once
a week, make agreements, share how it's going for us and generally
support each other to work on ourselves and have a good time
doing it. We also get to be at the Experience for free!
In an age of media hype, it's
refreshing to come across an organisation that continues and
thrives purely by recommendation, and trusts its future to
those people who risked doing it. If you would like to know
more, please e-mail: uk@isaexperience.com
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