The Events Committee now has a new name: Quality Assurance Committee (Q.A.C.). This fits better with its role of improving the quality of the events that are organised by AEGEE locals. They also have a new team, the AEGEEan interviewed them on the recent changes.
AEGEEan: So, you are a new team. What are the roles of the members of the team?
Q.A.C.: Yes, a new team with new ideas and a new approach to the work! The team now consists of a speaker: Antonis Triantafyllakis (AEGEE-Heraklio); plus five Quality Assurance Responsibles: Patrick Scholz (AEGEE-Aachen); Hilde Lahaije (AEGEE-Utrecht); Margarita Simonova (AEGEE-Moskva); Réka Salamon (AEGEE-Aachen); and Andrew Bartolo (AEGEE-Valetta).
The Quality Assurance Responsibles have already split the AEGEE locals among themselves, in order to have a better system to keep track of events and to improve communication with locals. We are planning to create Facebook groups and have one representative from each local for bidirectional communication between locals and the Q.A.C. Our priority for now is to reach all locals and explain why we should focus more on “quality events” and how cooperating with us would have great benefits for them.
What are the reasons behind renaming the (former) Events Committee?
AEGEE means a lot of things for all our members, but for many it is a learning platform for gaining competences we cannot get elsewhere. The Events Committee’s role in this was not very clear to the Network. Non-formal education is an important aspect of our work as an organisation, but that has to meet certain standards. With renaming the Committee, we set a clear aim: we want to raise the quality of events by putting more emphasis on educational content.
A better organised event with the right logistics and content will produce happier participants. Plus it will help keep a clear overview of AEGEE’s impact on its members and help us having a further recognition of non-formal educational tools, which is one of AEGEE’s greatest strengths.
How exactly are you planning to introduce this new system to the Network? Do you think the locals will be more interested in cooperating with the Committee this time?
We want to establish a constant communication with the locals and the Network Commission is already helping us with this. We are not here to annoy everyone with our forms; but more helping hands will result in making the organisation of events easier. The locals can contact us at any time with their proposed event and we are more than happy to:
1. Aid cooperation with another European Level body (especially in case of thematic events).
2. Help with the promotion of the event (we are thinking about an Events Newsletter).
3. Our guidelines and forms can make planning easier – so locals don’t have to start everything from scratch.
Will locals have to submit a forms and get “quality checked”? And how complicated is this new system going to be?
No more complicated than using Intranet… The locals have to submit the Assessment Form (which will become available on the Members Portal later). Once their event is approved, they can upload it on Intranet and the promotion can begin on EVENT-L and other platforms. Once the event is over, locals should fill out an Evaluation Form to give us proper feedback on the outcomes which they can also use for an internal evaluation of the event.
Anything else you would like to share with the AEGEEan?
Yes, ‘Quality Indicators’ is just the fancy new term for ‘I can help you with that’. Check out the presentation of the brand new Committee and don’t hesitate to write to us any time.
Written by: Lia Tuska (AEGEE-Kastoria & AEGEE-Sofia)