Making an impact, we do that together!

I am Joris, 29 years old, born in Mortsel and emigrated to the stone jungle: Antwerp. From an early age, I have been fascinated by the power and beauty of nature. It is even more precious in an urban environment because it is so rare there. That is exactly where the seeds of YOKUU lie: bringing nature back into my home is a childhood dream for me, but now I am getting ahead of myself.

I decided to study bio-engineering and to focus on an unknown and therefore often (unjustly) unloved aspect of nature: microbes. Microbes bear the connotation of causing disease, but microbes are so much more. I became more and more passionate about the positive (!) influence that microbes have on living organisms and on their environment.

Just like Peter Parker turns into Spider-Man after a spider bite, I slowly turned into ‘the.human.microbe’, bitten by microbes. Under that name, I fight on Instagram for more attention and care for our microbiome.

After my studies, I determined to continue on that path and to make microbes my mission. YOKUU is not an end point, but a logical step in restoring the balance between people and nature.

What is my dream? I dream of TED Talks in which I am absorbed in an inspiring explanation, which ends with a whole room shouting ‘YOKUU’, or at least being bitten by the good microbes, because yes, they exist in abundance.

I would like to invite you to the wonderful world of YOKUU, populated by millions of good bacteria from the forests. Welcome!