Choose a Year of Development, Led by Melissa Meyer, Lea Csikós, Elyse Mendel

Keep going, keep growing with Developing Across Borders — a unique, multicultural therapeutic practice. 

Come get a taste at an introductory experiential workshop.

Experience how Developing Across Borders brings people from all over the world together to build environments for emotional growth and connection.

With the support of a social therapeutic coach, group participants meet virtually each week to build spaces to play and perform with the diversity of their histories, traditions, social identities and language.  They learn to speak more honestly, actively and directly — to give their emotionality in new ways— and in so doing, transform their emotional pain and produce new possibilities for themselves and their communities.  

• Experience how multiculturalism is good for your mental health!
• Learn about our weekly social therapeutic groups and how you can join
• Meet members of our international community
• Play with the relationship between personal growth and community building.

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LEADER BIOGRAPHIES

Lea Csikós is a social therapeutic practitioner, a developmentalist, an intercultural trainer in non-formal education, community organizer, mentor, activist and a world traveler. She was born and raised in today's Serbia, Novi Sad, and has lived and worked all over Europe, currently residing in Antwerp, Belgium. Lea is a staff member and an associate of the East Side Institute (ESI), an alumna of the International Class and a graduate of the Social Therapist leader study program with ESI. She leads and co-leads several Developing Across Borders groups weekly. Most recently exploring the topics of health and life teams with her clients and on building life with grief. She is one of the founders of Volunteers Centre of Vojvodina, an organization based in Novi Sad, Serbia that has been working to bring opportunities for development to communities and youth in the region since 2004. She is a member of the trainers pool of the French-German Youth Office, has studied Environment and Romology and is a Veterinary nurse who loves the sea and riding bikes.

Elyse Mendel is a social therapeutic coach in the East Side Institute’s Developing Across Borders emotional development groups for people across the globe. She has 40 years of experience as a community activist with the All Stars Project, a national nonprofit that uses the developmental power of performance to transform the lives of youth from poor and underserved communities. Last year, Elyse retired from her position as Director of Career Services at Baruch College where she utilized improv and group building approaches with graduate students. She has a master’s degree in education from Baruch College/City University of New York.

Melissa Meyer is the East Side Institute’s associate director and a social therapeutic coach. She is chair of the International Organizing Committee for Performing the World Happenings, a biannual virtual gathering that explores performance, play and improvisation as methods to help communities grow and create positive social change. She leads Developing Across Borders groups, weekly emotional development groups that help people grow and develop together all over the world. She co-leads a regular study group with Desire Wanden, where they teach social therapeutic methodology through reading the popular titles of social therapy’s founder Fred Newman: Let's Develop and Performance of a Lifetime.