Lilia “Lia” Georgieva (AEGEE-Berlin) is a Bulgarian girl, who chose to study Communication Science in Berlin. She joined AEGEE for the Summer Universities and now is running for Project Manager of Summer University Coordination Team (SUCT). The AEGEEan interviewed her to learn more about her and her plans.
The AEGEEan: First of all, tell us some things about you. What do you do apart from AEGEE?
Lia: I try to live my life as good as I can. I am studying Communication Science in Berlin right now and I am also working part time. Of course, I leave some time for going out and travelling. I moved to Germany last year, so I was mainly occupied with getting to know the place and discovering my surroundings. Actually, besides AEGEE my life is pretty normal.
What is Summer University (SU) to you? What was your best SU experience? What was your worst SU experience?
The SU Project was my beginning in AEGEE. It showed me what was that so famous “AEGEE spirit”, I tried so many different things, I had so much fun on so many levels. I had a taste of the fun and carefree atmosphere of AEGEE and that lighted up the fire. I wanted to learn more, to do more, to give back the energy I received. So my first Summer University actually reached its goal – it got at least one person hooked on AEGEE.
I have been a participant twice in SUs, but the best experience was definitely when I was organising. It is one thing to be part of all the activities, and another thing is to prepare them, take care of people and see their happy faces when everything goes well. I loved it! I learned so much about myself, I developed in a way I never thought possible, and better than that was only the way our team grew together. We all started as different people doing a SU together, and then ended up as friends for life. Sadly, or actually luckily, there is no story I can share as worst SU experience.
Why did you decide to run for Project Manager? Why would you like to work on this Project? How did organising a SU prepared you for the task?
I wanted to be part of SUCT for quite dome time. The only thing was to decide the position and the answer came during Summer University Project School (SUPS) 2015. There we were divided into teams, and had to organise a fictional SU, and I was the Main Coordinator, which let me be in the leading position for the project. I tested myself to the fullest, trying out my character in stressful situations, and I had the chance to see what type of leader I would be. I was pleasantly surprised with myself – for me the team was way more important than proving my point, the peace while working and the understanding between each other were and will always be my first priority. From my side, the coordinator of a project should be the one taking care of deadlines, what is always one of the big problem in the SU projects, make sure the team is in a good mood, fit to work together and that everyone is working with desire, not to be the one imposing their own opinion or taking over the team. I saw I can do that, and therefore I think the position of Project Manager fits me the best.
What do you want to change from the current SUCT?
SUCT this year did a very good job. I really liked the idea of releasing the names of participants, but the implementation could have been done better. I would like to improve the form that organisers get with all the participants’ info. If names are released, they should be already in the file, also with information like the age of participants. Another vital thing is communication. I would really like to emphasis on that. More reminders, more e-mails, more communication between locals and SUCT, so that we can keep up the deadlines and things like obligatory sessions are actually included in the program. We will do some more work at the beginning so we don’t need to do it afterwards.
In your application you refer to having SUs with the topic of volunteering. How do you plan to implement this?
Volunteering is the essence of AEGEE, and for me it is a shame that we don’t emphasize more on it. I would like to change that, because I believe with the right promotion everything is possible. People consider SUs with more “serious” topics to be boring, and try to avoid them. But I think if they look at it in another way, if they think outside the box, they will see that doing a volunteering SU is not boring at all. I would like to help them discover this side. That means good promo material, showing the benefits of having a volunteering SU. Because it is also a category with which people don’t have too much experience, we will have to issue some guidelines and helping materials to explain the concept of a volunteering SU. To encourage more SUs with topics that are being left behind we can also give an extra point for the ones that do them.
You also mention that the system needs improvement at the receiving of motivation letters and updating the organisers’ platform. Tell us more about this idea.
I already mentioned the motivation letters’ problem, but basically when we were organising our SU this summer, there were a couple of problems we had with the format of the letters. This year you can download them from the website in an excel form, which was highly uncomfortable to read. It would be better to have the applications in as PDF for example. Also it would be good to add the names and ages of participants in the file. This will introduce a big change in the SU system. Having the names will allow organisers to get easier into contact with participants. We used to consider it unfair, because if you see the person you might choose him/her for his/her looks or because you know them. Well, if you know the person, you also know their application even if the name is not written. And having the names there for everyone to see will enable organisers to see for themselves if they have the so called “ghost participants” in front of them or not.
In the organisers’ platform there are small things that in my opinion can be corrected. For example, all the info about participants and the applications are in the incoming’s panel. It’s not a big thing if you are used to it. But if we can change that, make it more structured and user friendly, it will be better. Also, when you have to upload the program of the SU, there is a field, called “learning objectives”. It is not a bad thing to make organisers think about that, but in the moment when the program is uploaded no one has the time and the need to make up learning objectives. For me it is not useful there.
Written by Lia Tuska, AEGEE-Sofia/Thessaloniki
You can read her full candidature here.