During the first weekend of February, the Tripulación 4.0. (team consisting of Luis Alvarado and his subcommissioners who are the ones responsible for Portugese, Spanish and French locals) met in Madrid for a weekend of hard work and some donuts.
What the team did during two whole days, was to shut away in a room of the Spanish Youth Council in order to fix the world! Not exactly something the team managed to do, but at least they tried.
For the first time, the whole team was in the same room: Luis Alvarado Martinez, Lucille Rieux, Joao Monteiro, Sara Oliveira, Juan Sordo Barreiro, Miguel Gallardo Albajar, Coral Cabezas, Alberto, Fernando Campo Gómez and Yolanda Corrales were working together to try to improve the organisation and dynamics of the area they are responsible for.
The available time was carefully distributed in order to have the chance to debate all the topics that was planned. Most of the time was dedicated to talking about the beloved antennae part of the Network Commission’s (NetCom) area, in order to devote efforts in getting to know the state of all the locals in the region, what can be improved, how the locals are improving themselves each month and how the region is growing by leaps and bounds. Of course there was time for the auto-critique: has the team fulfilled all the tasks and objectives they established at the beginning of the term? How can the methods used within the team be improved? What measures can be put into practice before Agora Enschede to improve how the region works?
On Saturday afternoon the team had an interesting and productive meeting with some Erasmus Student Network (ESN) members, they are after all our
partner organisation! Tripulación had the chance to see how ESN works (discovering that AEGEE and ESN have lots of things in common) and how much the team can learn from them. During the meeting with them the team discovered activities, which could strengthen the NetCom area, could involve inviting each other to regional and national gatherings of their locals and their sections. In general the ESN representatives and Tripulación agreed that organising common activities in the future like exchanges, and trainings etc. could be a good idea.
All this while always having a cooperative approach whenever a conflict should arise between other associations on a local level. AEGEE-Madrid representative and subcommie of Luis’ Tripulación says about the experience: “After this experince, I have to encourage all AEGEE members to work together with other organisations, as we did with ESN, to learn from the team and share experience.”
Even if the planning was pretty tight, the members of Tripulación also had time (but just a bit) to relax. The social planning included an impromptu performance theater and a party with AEGEE-Madrid members in the mythical pub (where AEGEE-Madrid always have their parties) ‘Chamán’. In order to survive the hours of work, the team could always count on their close friend ‘Dunkin Donuts’ that maintained the sugar and caffeine levels high enough to work without a break.
Written by Yolanda Corrales, AEGEE-Madrid
Subcommie of Luis’ Tripulación 4.0