Background
Alice Besseling was born into a Roman Catholic family in Hem, a small community in West-Friesland, in 1944.
Alice Besseling was born into a Roman Catholic family in Hem, a small community in West-Friesland, in 1944.
She served on the city council until 1990. With a neighbor, Anke Bakker, she spent fifteen years researching the abandoned and razed Jewish cemetery on the Aarkade in Alphen aan den Rijn, uncovering much of the local Jewish history in the process (later the topic of a book by Bakker). In 2012, the city turned the abandoned cemetery into a city park and placed a monument remembering the Jewish community.
In 2008, her contributions to the community were rewarded with membership in the Order of Orange-Nassau.
After resigning from the Alphen city council, she worked for eleven years at the Centre for Law in the Information Society at Leiden University, and retired in 2010.
Foreign her work on the city council, her advocacy of women in her political party, and her community activism she was made a member of the Order of Orange-Nassau in 2008.
From a young age she was interested in governance, first in youth organizations and later in professional organizations – in 1971 she was working for International Business Machines Corporation when the Dutch government passed legislation mandating works councils for larger corporations, and she became the first elected member of the International Business Machines Corporation works council. During her tenure she was active in supporting weaker members of society. She claimed that "social policy is too important to leave to left-wing parties".
Besseling was a founding member of the local women"s group for the Capital Development Authority, and until her death she was a member of her party"s provincial women"s group.
Other community activities in Alphen includes founding and serving as a board member of a dance club for elderly singles, as president of the local athletic association Avanti, and as lector in Alphen"s Saint Boniface church.