During various statutory events you might have already heard about AEGEE’s partnership, or more like the friendship, with the Board of European Students of Technology. Founded in 1989, BEST provides provide communication, co-operation and exchange possibilities for engineer students all over Europe. It gathers 97 local BEST Groups in 33 countries, gathering around 6000 students… and they also dance the Tunak!
You might have already got to know the LBG (Local BEST Group) in your city and realized that the world of engineer students is slightly different from AEGEE. How exactly? Let us take a look at the events where you can meet BESTies and where you can find it out for yourself! The buzzwords are: Pokémons, excellence in trainings, Barbie Girl dances, engineer competitions, strange finger rules and lots of “wow, we do similar things we just call them differently”. Let us begin:
Network Meetings in AEGEE = Regional Meetings in BEST
Similarly to our Network Meetings, BEST also has an autumn and a spring cycle of Regional Meetings where 1-2 AEGEEans are always welcome to join for each location. Usually during October-November or March-April, for 25-50 EUR participation fee, you can attend one of their events and bring back to your local a lot of good ideas and shared best practices from our BESTies. Stay tuned for the Open Call for the Spring Semester!
Seasonal Courses in BEST – European Schools in AEGEE
The seasonal courses of BEST are open all across the year providing a practical path to knowledge for engineer students and their members’ pool. With the training courses being free for their members and an established quality brand towards externals, the courses on technology and career skills are really popular inside and outside BEST. Their trainings are less soft-skill oriented like the European Schools and the efficient fundraising of the LBG, that allows a free training course, also puts a high emphasis on delivering a quality event: if an LBG fails to meet a certain standard and receives a lot of complaints about the event, they can be put up for suspension by the general assembly – meaning they are not allowed to organise any event in the following year!
Agora / European Planning Meeting = General Members Meeting and Presidents’ Meeting in BEST
Our assemblies are bigger, maybe sometimes efficiency lies in the smaller numbers? The general assembly of BEST (GMM) usually gathers around 250-300 people and lasts for 4 days. The organizing LBG is supposed to gather enough resources to make participation free for all the participants. Also the host of the upcoming general assembly the year after is selected by… the general assembly! Candidates have to present a detailed application, and once selected, they also need to present an preparation update at the next GMM half a year later. How do you think this would work in AEGEE?
Another interesting event is the Presidents’ Meeting: around 100 representatives (president or one other board member per local) gather together for a 4-day event and perfectly implement the concept of work hard, play hard. Procedural and statutes changes, activity reports of committees and supporting bodies, presentations of strategies and plans of the board and the election of some of the candidates are the things the delegates at the PM have mandate to decide and vote on – making the workload during the general assembly lighter.
AEGEE history fact: AEGEE introduced the Presidents’ Meetings in 1987, which later transformed into the European Boards’ Meeting and later on the European Planning Meeting. The idea behind the presidents’ meeting is not to highlight the “ruler of the local”, but to have one delegate per local who can represent and take executive decision that are needed for the functioning of the organization. If the procedural tasks, proposals, reports and voting are taken care of by the president or a board member representing the local, less work there is left for Agora.
AEGEEans are welcome to attend BEST events in 2016 as well: a small delegation from AEGEE-Moskva will take part in the International Projects Forum of BEST in Moscow in February, the open call for participants for the Regional Meetings will be announced soon and next year we are hoping to send a few members both to the Presidents’ Meeting and to the General Members’ Meeting – all opportunities will be communicated to you on the Members’ Portal and on AEGEE EVENT-L!
Written by Réka Salamon, Project Director and Vice President of AEGEE-Europe