The award winning Europe on Track is back and ready for the second round. The Comité Directeur is working on finding the team for the second edition of the popular project and because of that The AEGEEan interviewed the president of AEGEE-Europe, Luis Alvarado Martinez about it.
The AEGEEan: The second edition of Europe on Track (EoT) 2014 is focused on the European Parliamentary Elections of 2014. Can you tell us more about this?
Luis: 2014 will be the year of the European Parliamentary elections, so all the EU discussions will be related to them. It will for sure be the biggest event or activity related to Europe and therefore we thought it would be very important to connect Europe on track with it.
In the new edition, our travellers will be interviewing students again and young people around Europe, but this time they will be asking them to send messages of what they would like to change in Europe to the newly elected Members of the European Parliament (MEPs)
If you had a chance to be in front of the almost 800 MEPs who on a daily basis decide and approve legislation which affect each one of us, what would you tell them? This is the question that we want to ask young people around the continent.
Are there any improvements compared to the former edition of Europe on Track ?
One of the big changes for the second edition, is that we have already applied for funding from the Open Society Foundation. If this is accepted we will be able to ensure that our travellers have everything they need and they will have much better conditions than last time, but we will also be able to support AEGEE locals that organize events in their cities. Having the experience from the first edition will help us without a doubt. We will have a bigger coordination team from the very begining who will also be deciding much more about the content aspect, as well as all the logistics.
The fact that we also created a known brand with the first edition of Europe on Track will already give quite a lot more visibility from the start of the second one, as well as much more support and cooperation from other partners.
The period was changed from november/december to april/may. What are the reasons?
We have chosen these dates because they are close to the European Parliament elections in May 2014, but also because we though that maybe the travellers would enjoy some warm weather more.
Will the routes stay the same as the EoT 2012?
The routes still have not been decided. Once we have selected the coordination team we will decide the route with them, and then we will also have to take into consideration the opinion of the travellers. For this you will have to wait a bit, but we will inform the people with enough time so locals that are interested in hosting EoT events can know and plan in advance.
Is it difficult to find lodging for the Ambassadors and antennae that are intersted to cooperate?
This part of the project is of course always challenging, and this is why one person of the coordinating team will be just focused on this logistics aspects of finding places for travellers to stay and AEGEE locals willing to organize events. Of course if we get the funding from the grant, everything will be much easier.
But last time, the response from locals was amazing, as many of them really wanted to take active part in the project and host events in their cities! We hope that with this edition, participation will increase even more.
The Network cooperation with our project and our locals that was showed during the first edition, was clearly one of the success key actions that gave us the Charlemagne Youth Prize 2013.
If you want to be part of the Coordinating team of the second edition of Europe on Track, please send the following information to president@aegee.org
-Name + Surname
– Antenna
– AEGEE Experience
– Non AEGEE related experience
– Time availability
Written by Cosmina Bisboaca, AEGEE-Torino