Even though the spring was swept away by the rigorous winter throughout Europe, the Comité Directeur (CD) spirit has not disappeared and the two statutory events, the tight deadlines, the many AEGEEans we met in these four weeks resulted in an unforgettable and crazy month! Despite the fact that the CD members spent many days together abroad, we still had the possibility to engage ourselves in doing diverse activities, work on new projects and push the association forward day by day.
Luis Alvarado Martinez (President)
March was another very busy month starting with the EBM in Valletta. Right after coming back from Malta, I had a few days to catch up with the work in the office and left again as CD represenative to the wonderful Network Meeting (NWM) in Paris.
Straight after coming back , I flew to Dublin, Ireland to the EU Youth Conference of the Structured Dialogue on Youth under the Irish EU Presidency, as part of the Spanish and AEGEE delegation drafting concrete recommendations together with policy makers on the topic of social inclusion and youth work.
One day after coming back from Dublin, together with my CD members, we started preparing everyhing for “Back to Brussels”, which is the annual Alumni gathering of Les Anciens. This time we tried to make it special for them, allowing them to see the old house in Rue Nestor de Tière, 15 for the very last time, and then, bringing them to the new headoffice in Rue du Noyer, 55. They were indeed very happy with the new house and they have already started supporting us financially to get new accessories and pimping up the new headquarters of AEGEE.
The week after I flew back to Las Palmas Gran Canaria, my hometown through an invitation of my former University to give a speech on Youth Participation and the possibilities which the EU gives to students, during the annual International Mobility Forum. Within the framework of this forum, I was given a recognition award for my work and AEGEE-Europe’s work this year. It was also very nice to see the sun before going back to Brussels.
The last week of the month, as some of you might have already heard, is one of the most stressful weeks in your CD life: the time of Agora preparation!
Anna Gots (Financial Director)March started for me with the inspiring EBM, full of discussions and ideas for the future initiatives.
Right from sunny Malta, I went to still winterish Helsinki to become one of the trainers at the NWM there. Together with Patricia Juhl Anthony (Subcommissioner in that area), we engaged participants of NWM in discussions about Action Agenda, European level in AEGEE, regions, cooperation within one network area and proposals for the upcoming Agora.
Back in Brussels, I started the preparations for the Audit meeting, bookkeeping of the last month, taking care of reimbursements and compiling Financial reports. The Audit meeting coincided with Back 2 Brussels, so members of the Audit Commission were rewarded with a nice reception in the end of the hard-working day.
The last two weeks of March were mainly devoted to Agora preparations: finalising and presenting financial documents to the Network, preparing receipts and change for the registration desk and of course preparing all presentations. The latter one took quite some time taking into account that this time, I was supposed to prepare nine of them.
Besides, in March I was working together with Policy Officer Armenak on finalising and issuing an open call for the policy consultation round in Krakow,
and together with AEGEE Fair manager Olga Rivero Menéndez, doing the last preparations for the Fair in Mannheim.
Kathrin Renner (Vice President and External Relations Director)After coming back from the EBM, I immediately continued working on the Study and Career Fair of Agora Rhein-Neckar, which thanks to the hard work of the local organisers was very successful. A very special thanks goes to Jannes Rupf, Frederich Renisch and Christian Bussar!
Beside all this, I followed up agreements with some of our partners: Interrail confirmed to sponsor our Summer University maps as well as to give us 20 tickets for the new year. I also had conversations with Brussels Airlines, updating new discounts, Imperial Tobacco and the ONE foundation. We were the most excited about the meeting with Hello Europe, with which hopefully, we will soon sign a partnership.
The weekends in March were also booked: in the middle of March the Back2Brussels event took place, where around 40 former AEGEE members came to visit us, and some preparations were done around this. The next weekend, I travelled to Leiden to attend the Network Meeting of Wieke and I also participated in discussions and sessions.
In preparation for the Agora, with Bea, Miguel and Lucille, we finished the Impact Measurement concept and the last details for the new membership cards were set so that we could distribute them in Mannheim.
The last week before the Agora was dedicated to finishing presentations, updating and getting an overview about all our work so that we can present it and update you on this at the Agora.
I want to say already in this Telegram an enormous gigantic thank you and express my huge respect for the organisers of Spring Agora Rhein-Neckar: I believe it was the best-organised Agora I have ever attended, but also one with the best spirit among the organisers. A very special thanks to Leandra Jordan and Max van Bahlen for helping us with whatever we needed, Jannes, Frederich, Benjamin Dohl, Alex Becker, and Stefan Noll for waking us up so charmingly every morning.
Beata Matuszka (Network and Human Resources Director)March seemed to pass fast, due to mainly the fact that we had basically two statutory events this month. The first day of the meteorological spring caught us at the amazing EBM, organized by AEGEE-Valletta, where I was facilitating two thematic sessions (one about the role and future of entrepreneurship in Europe and the other about the euroskepticism) and two internal sessions (working on objectives for the Action Agenda and the implementation of these objectives in smaller locals in AEGEE). Right after the EBM, I was traveling to Budapest, where I had a whole weekend at the recruitment (freshmen’s) camp of AEGEE-Budapest with around 120 participants and I had the possibility there to have a session about the European level of AEGEE and energise the people there.
We have started to work on the concept development with International Politics Working Group and Culture Working Group (Ivan Bielik, Guillermo Garcia Tabares and Alice Bednarova) of an initiative of Divided Societies.
Besides, with two local level representatives (Lucia Gavulova from AEGEE-Bratislava and Halina Ivanova from AEGEE-Grodno) and many future project members, we prepared the application for the Growth Management Project of European Youth Forum, which intends to support the qualitative changes in the member organisations.
And if it’s Agora, then it’s endless preparation: network status, antenna criteria, charts, graphs, progress meetings, impact measurement, registration table, preparation in soul for (1-2 hours of) sleeping on the floor for days, meeting with friends, catching up with them, working hard and squeezing everything in 24 hours every day… But this will be the story of another month.
Lucille Rieux (Secretary General)
March was such a busy month, it passed extremely fast.
Once that we were back from the EBM, the follow-up has started with some thanking emails, evaluation forms and starting the result booklet for the EBM.
The following week-end, I attended the NWM in Paris, where I had several workshops and got the opportunity to meet again with some members of locals I was taking care of when I was Network Commissioner, myself. It was really regenerating to attend this Network Meeting and to exchange ideas regarding AEGEE with the members.
At the same time, the preparation for the Agora started to become more and more urgent. I was communicating with the chair and coordinating the different presentations that the members of the CD were to have during the Agora, as well as preparing the different the booklets to be published before the Agora. More specifically, I have been working on the preparation of the identity progress meeting, gathering the results of the first phase of the survey we conducted so far, as well as working on the process of impact measurement within AEGEE. I was also preparing the future contracts for the next General Assembly in Zaragoza, as well as discussing the future locations for the next General Assemblies.
Agora finally arrived, and at the end of the month, the whole team headed to Germany a few days in advance, in order to deal with the last preparations with local organisers and the Chair. Agora brought some good surprises, as the whole team has been re-elected, which also proves that the work achieved so far is being appreciated. It is good to receive some good feedback from the Network.
It is now time to look ahead and see the surprises that April will bring us.
Miguel Gallardo (Projects Director)If February was a crazy month because of the preparations for the EBM, March was even crazier, with the EBM itself and the preparations for Agora Rhein Neckar. Moreover, with the decision to submit a candidature again, you can imagine how difficult it was to find time for everything…
AEGEE was invited to a Europe-US Student meeting organized by our patron James Skelly, and as the topic was connected to environment, I was selected to go there. It was a great experience to explore the differences in how European and American students approach to the same issues. However, I missed the Back To Brussels meeting and dinner because I was in Aix-en-Provence.
Moreover, I took one of the few free weekends, I had to attend the Knowledge Transfer meeting between Agora Alicante and Agora Zaragoza. Which brought great memories to me and made me very positive towards the expectations for the Autumn Agora 2013!
I had to prepare quite a lot of things for the Agora Rhein Neckar: a whole set of presentations about the Strategic Planning, about WGs and of course the Activity Report. We had several meetings to prepare the workshops, Prytania and Progress Meetings and arrive to the location of the Agora as ready as possible.
It kept snowing in Brussels, except for a couple of short spring-like days. I hope that soon the sun is going to shine finally, and we can enjoy the garden of the new house.
Pavel Zbornik (European Institutions and Communications Director)March started with the EBM where I recorded the Panel discussion on the topic of New Challenges for European Identity. Later on, I was busy cutting and editing videos which you can watch now at AEGEE-Europe’s YouTube channel (http://youtu.be/dzokWeoM_VQ). I als oprepared the new issue of AEGEE’s Newsletter which was delayed due to my participation at the EBM.
Right after the EBM, I participated at NWM Paris and held sessions about PR as trainer, together with Inana Namet.
After the NWM, I attended a meeting with consultancy company together with Lucille Rieux in Paris. After that I took a day off to see a bit of Paris which due to heavy snow and twice cancellation of my bus back to Brussel resulted in two more days in Paris.
During the third weekend, we hosted Back 2 Brussels reception for Les Anciens, where every CD member took part in the preparation and realisation: I was responsible for the BBQ.
The rest of the month was mostly connected to the preparation for the Agora and the deadlines for the Study Sessions by the Council of Europe and European Youth Foundation, which were successfully submitted.