Behind the Commissioners of the Juridical Commission and the Network Commission some AEGEE members make an unknown, but very relevant work: they are the SubCommissioners. The AEGEEan decided to talk with these people who, perhaps, might be the next Commissioners.
In the Network Commission, every Commissioner is assigned to some specific locals, and is aided by a number of SubCommissioners. For example, Melissa Carreres’s (AEGEE-Alicante) team is called “La Tripu”, the crew, and it consists of herself, as a NetCommie, and five SubCommies that help her with her tasks: Marcos Herrero (AEGEE-Oviedo), Julián Ródenas (AEGEE-Valencia), Rodrigo Gutiérrez (AEGEE-Valladolid), Juan Miguel de León (AEGEE-Las Palmas) and Laura Pérez (AEGEE-Leòn).
Marcos Herrero
Marcos has been an AEGEE member for many years, and an active member for most of them. He participated in five Summer Universities, two of which as an organiser; two Agorae, one of which as an organiser, three Network Meetings (NWM), and also many local events.
Juan Miguel has been an AEGEE member for three years, two of them as the President of AEGEE-Las Palmas. Currently, he is an advisor of the antenna and SubCommissioner of AEGEE-Madrid, AEGEE-Porto, AEGEE-Tenerife and AEGEE-Las Palmas. He has participated in three Summer Universities as a participant, and two Summer Universities as the Incoming and Outgoing Responsible, being the Main Organiser of one of them. He has also attended to two Agorae, one Eerupean Planning Meeting, one YVote, and many other events both at European and local level.
Juan Miguel de León
Laura has been a member for one year and a half, she has been in her local board for about a year as the Secretary. All in all she has attended more than twenty events and organised more than ten in the last year. She tells us about the activities they organise as SubCommie of the NetCom that they have a ‘weekly Skype meeting’ with Melissa, and that they Skype with a board representative from each of their antennae at least once a month. Moreover, every day, they are responsible for the mailing lists; sending reminders, open calls, helping the antennae with any doubts or problems they may have.
Juan Miguel adds that, as SubCommissioners, they analyse their own activity and that they give themselves feedback. This way, they can know if they are going in a good direction and what kind of help they are capable of providing. They help Melissa to organise the NWMs and ‘Renove’, a weekend event, during which their assigned locals get together after the ‘SUmmer’.
Laura Pérez
Each member in La Tripu is guaranteed to gain experience, and to get support and ideas from the Network Commission. This experience has been important for junior members, those who relatively recently joined AEGEE. Laura, for instance, tells us that she has improved her communications skills a lot, and that she has started to organise her time better. In addition, she got to know many people from her locals much better and she has had the chance to see and experience different aspects of her duties.
Marcos tells us that being a SuCcommissioner permitted him to learn more about AEGEE from a different perspective and that he learned how to deal with different kind of problems. For the requirements needed to join the NetCom as a SubCommissioner, “I would say you need to have a little extra time to dedicate to your locals, experience so you can help them if something comes up or they have doubts and, the most important, passion for AEGEE and helping others” says Laura. For Marcos and Juan Miguel you should be an active and positive person who can deal with problems with calm and perseverance, and capable of working in a multicultural environment, to be willing to help others and to be objective.
This article is part of a series of articles about the SubCommies of AEGEE. Check out our first article in the series, by clicking here.
Written by Matteo Lai, AEGEE-Cagliari