Original Article
1995 was the year of our Association’s tenth anniversary which we took as an opportunity to analyse the achievements of AEGEE in its first ten years.
AEGEE has realised a number of its aims, the biggest one being the creation of a truly pan-European network spreading all over the continent and using it to promote the European idea among young people, especially within the student population.
In the last ten years, AEGEE gave over 200,000 people the opportunity to increase their awareness of Europe first hand, during projects and events organized on topics of young people’s concern.
Many results and experiences were taken from different projects and events, and they were presented to the responsible institutions and the outside world. The greatest result however, the experience of all of us, that we can only build the society of tomorrow together, cannot be measured. With the world moving closer and closer together, with distances becoming shorter and communication faster and more plentiful every day, there is no alternative to mutual understanding and co-operation in order to tackle and solve the problems of the future.
Also in 1996, AEGEE has great plans to integrate more people into an all-European society.
This year we will see major milestones – in the content and structure of our Association. With our office moving to Brussels we decided to be closer to many organisations that will determine the fate of Europe more than ever. With the project “Find your way to and within an open society” we see a co-operation of 14 locals in East and West, working together to strengthen the pluralistic society in Central and Eastern Europe.
Over 100 European events with topics ranging from Education to the European Monetary Union are going to be organized by AEGEE antennae. Many of these events are to be seen in an international context of co-operation of different antennae in certain fields which we chose to focus on, such as the issues at stake in the upcoming Intergovernmental Conference, the question about our common European identity, and the challenges and opportunities of the Information Society.
15,000 students in 170 cities from Amsterdam to Athina and from Madrid to Moskva are presently members of our Association and the numbers are still growing. But growth is not an objective in itself; it is a way to improve the European society of tomorrow by involving more and more young people in learning from and about each other and thus enabling them to live together in peace and prosperity.
Written by Christoph Strohm, AEGEE-Köln and President of AEGEE-Europe in 1995
Originally published in Key To Europe 1995-1996