There could be nothing more straightforward than a Local Training Course: it is a course, it is local, and you will be trained. Nevertheless, the most generic names can have the most varying results, and, because of this, no single LTC is the same. This is why the AEGEEan sat down with Alejandra Piot from AEGEE-A Coruña, Raquel Pastor from AEGEE-Burgos, Katha Schwerdt from AEGEE-Dresden and Piotr Stawicki from AEGEE-Poznań, to reflect on the respective LTCs that their local organised in the past half year.
The AEGEEan: Could you give us a short summary of your LTC?
Participants and Trainers at the LTC in A Coruña
Alejandra: Our LTC was based on the differences between all the regions of Spain. It was called “LTC: 8 apellidos Gallegos” (8 Gallician surnames), based on the Spanish film “8 apellidos vascos” (8 Basque surnames). We made an LTC1 with workshops about what aegee is: on a European level, regarding event management, explaining step-by-step what a board does and more. There were only two trainers, Javier Ramírez (AEGEE-Las Palmas & AEGEE-Madrid) and myself (AEGEE-A Coruña). At first we expected to be more, but there were many problems for them to come. Nonetheless, it worked really well to work together and the participants were really interested in the workshops. Afterwards, they congratulated us on doing a good job. David Mezquita and Marcos Puente, both from AEGEE-A Coruña, also helped out. Additionally, we organised activities, such as hiking and gymkhana. There were more or less ten organisers, some of them were newbies, but they did a good job.
Raquel: In October, we organised an LTC, which was placed in Celadilla, a village near Burgos. We decided to organise an LTC after the summer to explain to the newer members that AEGEE is more than a Summer University or a meeting with old friends after the summer. The newer members were not our only objective though; a new board was just elected and a training weekend was the best idea to consolidate the new working group. Furthermore, we had great trainers like Anita from AEGEE-Burgos, who shared her evolution within AEGEE with us and Eloy from AEGEE-León, who explained the Erasmus+ programme to us.
Piotr: Our LTCs always last for three days and their topic is always the same, event management. The programme is divided into one-and-a-half to two-and-a-half-hour long workshop modules and cases about a particular part of event management, such as team building, event promotion, FR, budgeting and more.
Katha: Our LTC took place from the 22nd till the 24th of April. The title of the weekend was “Together to get there II”, since it was the second LTC held by our antenna. The aim was to train the new members on how to be an active AEGEE member, organise events and to show which possibilities AEGEE offers.
Participants at the LTC in Burgos
Roughly how many people visited your LTC?
Raquel: We had 20 participants from AEGEE-Burgos, and some friends from other antennas who assisted us during our last LTC. A huge number of participants of that LTC are now active members that try to collaborate with the antenna and its activities. Some want to join as many events as they can; their next stop will be the Agora in Bergamo.
Piotr: At our last LTC, there were 20 participants and an additional of about 15 people from AEGEE as trainers or organisers, but sometimes we can have up to about 25 to 30 participants. We organise LTC1 and LTC2: in our LTC1, there are usually about ten to 20 participants, mainly externals and in our LTC2, there are usually six to twelve participants, both members of AEGEE as well as other organisations who have some experience in event management.
Katha: We were twelve participants in total, it was a good amount of people for our team building and icebreaking games. Also we had a “What is AEGEE” workshop and had a lot of fun on the night walk, PR, project management and conflict management workshop, as well as in the short introduction to fundraising.
Alejandra: We had, more or less, 25 participants, some of them AEGEE members, others were externals. Right now, some of these externals have become members of our antenna, so we are really happy. They were so interested in everything we talked about.
How did you attract members to join your LTC?
AEGEE-Poznań’s LTC, “Your success, our passion!”
Piotr: Our members usually only take part in LTC2s and we try to attract them by having a diverse range of topics, workshops and trainers. Thanks to this, our members can participate in a couple of LTCs and each time learn something else –as long as there are new trainers, workshops and activities-.
Alejandra: We promoted it as a formal event, which also included team building exercises and attractive activities. We send mails though the University Mail Server, because we thought that some people would want to come with us and we were right. Some people read our email and replied, asking us for more information. I think we did really well, because it was a good way to catch new members.
Raquel: Of course the main attraction of an LTC is to spend a weekend meeting friends and new people. However, active members would pass on their motivation to our newer members every day during the course. That is why our last LTC was so successful, because everybody wanted to know about AEGEE and its versatility.
Written by Willem Laurentzen, AEGEE-Nijmegen