We are human beings first. Everything else is detail.

Zilka Gerritsen is Venezuelan by birth, with roots stretching back to Martinique and Bolivia. A first generation Venezuelan, she grew up carrying multiple worlds inside her before she ever left home. She has since lived across continents, has built a life with her Dutch husband, and they are raising their children born in Ireland, the Netherlands, and Northern Ireland. Integration is something that not only she has studied but it is something she has lived, in her own blood and in her own family, every single day.
That journey across cultures, countries, and entirely different ideas of what belonging means is not background detail. It is the foundation of everything The Humanitas Initiative does.

Zilka knows what it feels like to arrive somewhere new and wonder whether you will ever truly belong. She also knows what it feels like when a community chooses to open its doors with genuine warmth rather than polite tolerance. That distinction between coexistence and belonging is what drives her work.

Now based in Coleraine, Northern Ireland, Zilka works with organisations, councils, and community bodies across the region to close the gap between integration as an intention and integration as a lived experience. She brings to that work something no qualification can replicate: the intelligence that only comes from having navigated it yourself.

The Humanitas Initiative is a professional consultancy and community bridge building practice dedicated to making integration real: not just policy, not just aspiration, but something people actually feel.

The person behind the work

How we work

The Humanitas Initiative delivers workshops, facilitation, strategic consultancy, and keynote speaking across Northern Ireland and beyond. We have worked with Building Communities Resource Centre, Beyond Skin, and InterEthnic Forums; organisations doing serious work on integration and social cohesion who trust us to bring both rigour and humanity to the table.
We do not offer off the shelf diversity training. Every engagement is designed around the specific community, context, and challenge in front of us. That takes longer. It works better.
We also convene the Humanitas Collaborative: a speaker series that brings together global experts, local leaders, and lived experience voices to share insight on integration, identity, and social innovation. If you want to contribute a voice or attend a session, we would love to hear from you.