Personal development is not something that makes you do the impossible, but the achievable. In this modern world, everybody recognises the importance of this, while some of us try to learn, others just keep without it. Apparently, AEGEE-Eskişehir doesn’t belong to the latter mentioned. That’s why AEGEE-Eskişehir Personal Development Working Group organised an event which they named ‘Development Begins Within You’ on 9-10 April. Furthermore, it wasn’t a typical one which involves only learning theories, but also creating and applying them. To understand more, we’ve come together with Berfu Özer, (AEGEE-Eskişehir) Secretary of Personal Development Working Group (PDWG), and Gamze Çayır, (AEGEE-Eskişehir) Speaker of Personal Development Working Group, both of whom are the main responsible for this event.
The AEGEEan: Is it your first ‘Personal Development’ event?
Berfu Özer: No, this event has been organised three times in three years, and it has been organised by the Secretary and the Speaker of the PDWG. Also, we will most probably come with a modified fourth one next year, as it appears to attract a lot of attention. Actually, we can say it is becoming a tradition in AEGEE-Eskişehir. [she smiles]
Where did the event take place and how many participants did you have?
Gamze Çayır: It took place at Atatürk Culture and Art Center at Anadolu University, and we had around seventy participants.
What did the programme consist of?
Berfu Özer: On the first day, we had three speech givers, Peren Yörük, a life coach, Melih Arat an NLP (neuro linguistic programming) specialist, and Ömer Karapınar, an academic in communication and media, who spoke about empathy, prejudice, self-confidence and achieving your target.
On the second day, before the sessions began, we played ice breaking games for the participants to relax and get in the mood. And then we started to play Monopoly which included twenty-four games. Participants were divided into ten groups each of which was assigned a game master and each started from a different box. Their aim was to come back to their starting point. Each group took a break at different times. The practice part was completed in about five hours. Within the practice, there were games of empathy, and self-confidence developing activities like sharing videos of singing a song on social media. Also, questions were asked about the most delicate parts which the speech givers presented during the seminar. At the end of the games , each group received points even though we didn’t rank them as ‘the winner, the second…’.
How did you come up with the idea of this event?
Berfu Özer: AEGEE-Eskişehir has always been interested in the subject of personal development, and the events made until today have always attracted attention in AEGEE. We took part in last year’s event and enjoyed it a lot. After that event, we started asking ourselves ‘How can we make it better?’. Considering the answer to this question, we made a few changes. After some research, we decided to ask for help from IEEE Turkey (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). So the practice part was prepared by IEEE Turkey who were a group of around twenty people. They joined on the second day of the event, and supported and helped us during the games, which meant a lot to us.
Were you inspired by other AEGEE PDWGs, or did you get any help with ideas from other PDWGs while preparing the content of the event?
Gamze Çayır: We didn’t get any help other than from IEEE. However, we proceeded with the ideas of our weekly meetings’ attendants, other working groups’ speakers and secretaries, and members of the committee.
Can you say that you made your event different from a typical personal development seminar? What did you do for that purpose? What were the enjoyable parts?
Berfu Özer: After some research, we realised that no personal development seminar had been made with the practice part in our country. Therefore, we believe we broke new ground in that. Furthermore, we learned that our participants thought that the event was very efficient and above expectations, which made us also really happy. The fact that it had never been done before made us a bit nervous, but I think we came through and set a good example.
Also, the speech givers’ interaction with the participants made it a very efficient event. One of the speech givers, Ömer Karapınar, made the participants play a game about prejudice after he talked about it during his speech. The participants not only enjoyed, but were also really impressed with it.
Finally, at the end of the event, we made an after movie which summarised the whole event. The stand work, the preparations, and moments from these 2 days were shown. This way, we finished the event with a lot of laughter and good memories to remember.
Can you make an overall comment for the event?
Gamze Çayır: After the event, on our first meeting, we realised that a lot of participants started to come to our office, which was really uplifting. Obviously, this event resulted in some new AEGEEans. [she smiles]
Berfu Özer: Personally, I feel like I gained a lot more experience in AEGEE, and it will become an important step for my future work in AEGEE.
Written by M.S., AEGEE-Eskişehir