Andrea Nostro (AEGEE-Reggio Calabria) is one of the candidates for Summer University Coordination Team (SUCT). He is experienced in AEGEE in many matters and deeply passionate about improving what he calls the “primary door” to AEGEE: The Summer University project. In this interview you get to know more about him and his ideas.
When and why did you join AEGEE?
It was my brother’s fault! He suggested me to join AEGEE in 2011. Honestly, I was not really impressed in the beginning, but he talked about the possibility to meet new people, to visit different countries and to do a positive change in my life…. and now I am addicted to AEGEE, which led me to found a new antenna in 2012, develop our AEGEE-Reggio Calabria home-brew beer in 2013, and organize numerous events, but my greatest success was and will always be our first SU, there were such wonderful moments, that will be an important part of my life forever.
What have you learned while being President of your antenna?
For sure how to work as a team. I feel myself first of all as member of my antenna and as that, I started to hear every opinion of other members. During my presidency, I tried to give importance to the team and we worked all together and support each others. It is a pleasure to share my knowledge with my team and to help the new ones learn more and grow at the same time.
In your candidature, when you talk about motivation, you mention primarily your skills; but why do you want to be part of SUCT? What does the SUCT experience mean for you?
Honestly, my primary objective is to help AEGEE. SUCT is more or less the primary door for new members, so my objective is to build a positive interface to make AEGEE bigger.
What would you like to do in SUCT?
I am a creative person, full of new ideas. First of all I would like to develop a new website in collaboration with the team, a new site easier and at the same time more nice to look at.
What did you get out of the event: “SU Teach & Beach AEGEE-Patra”?
It was my first SU , and it was simply amazing! It had a great program and activities, no time for you to get bored! It was an amazing group of people and organizers. I had an amazing experience there, I learned a lot of things about AEGEE, and now it’s the time to put that into practice .
What is the “hidden selection”?
“Hidden selection” will be a more democratic way to select people for the SUs . I am a bit tired to see always the same faces at every Summer University, and I am also tired to hear that “I selected he or she because he/she looks good on the Facebook avatar”. As you know the Summer University is the primary door of the AEGEE world. It attracts new members, and if he/she couldn’t attend an SU, he/she loses the opportunity to get to know us better, and we lose the opportunity of having a possible new active member .
One of your goals is “to give more importance to the motivation letter instead of searching the person via Facebook and social networks”. How do you plan to do this?
I would like to hide the names , surnames and e-mail addresses during the pre-selection process, and reveal those to the organizers just after the selection was completed. To me that is a good solution to have real motivated members instead of good looking, but not really deserving participants.
Written by Patricia Anthony, AEGEE-Koebenhavn