Don't Know How to Build Your Life. Nobody Does! A 5-Week Guide to Building Life Teams led by Lea Csikós & Elyse Mendel

For anyone who wants to

BUILD A LIFE TEAM, live life socially,

AND expand and activate their support network

Together, we'll explore where you feel stuck in your life, experiment with new ways of responding, and build or strengthen a life team with people who can support you as you take on life's challenges.

Whether you're joining this Developing Across Borders workshop for the first time or returning to continue the work, you'll find a space to deprivatize the challenges of everyday life—health, work, career, family, relationships, and more.

Through improvisation, readings, conversation, and social therapeutic group-building, Lea and Elyse will help you discover that creating a joyful, meaningful life isn't something we do by ourselves. It's something we build together.

Zoom Meeting Dates:

Sundays, October 25th (at 10:30AM Eastern US Time - UTC-4), and November 1st, 8th, 15th and 22nd (at 10:30AM Eastern US Time - UTC-5).

PLEASE NOTE the time change in the Eastern US between the first and second weekends.

Leader Biographies

Lea Csikós is a social therapeutic practitioner, developmentalist, intercultural trainer, and community organizer from Novi Sad, Serbia. With over 20 years of experience living and working across Europe and now based in Antwerp, she leads Developing Across Borders groups at the East Side Institute. A co-founder of the Volunteers Centre of Vojvodina, she has created programs that have reached hundreds of youth and communities. Today, she draws on her combined expertise and experiences to design spaces that are engaging, transformative, and human-centered. Lea brings curiosity, warmth, and a love of travel, the sea, animals, improv, and cycling into her work—because, as she jokes, growth is serious business and it should also be joyous.

Elyse Mendel is a social therapeutic practitioner, educator, community organizer, and activist with years of experience working in multicultural communities. She has served as a director of career services in higher education, guiding students as they explore career paths, discover their strengths, and pursue their potential. Elyse has pioneered the use of improvisational play and group-building as tools for emotional, social, and leadership development. She is on the staff of the East Side Institute and is a social therapeutic coach, leading weekly international emotional development groups through Developing Across Borders, as well as the Institute's international Creating Our Mental Health program.