Recently the President of AEGEE-Europe, Luis Alvarado Martinez, traveled to Malta to take part in the General Assembly (GA) of Les Anciens (LA). This interview with Luis gives you an insight to what Les Anciens is, what their General Assembly was about and how they work together with the Comité Directeur (CD).
The AEGEEan: You travel all the time, and recently you went to Malta to attend the General Assembly of Les Anciens. Can you explain briefly what Les Anciens is and what happens at a General Assembly as the one you attended?
Luis: Les Anciens is a group which was started many years ago, with the intention of gathering the elites and very active members of AEGEE, people who had had an outstanding AEGEE career and had contributed very much, specially on the European level of the association. Over the years, Les Anciens has had many debates and moved slowly into a more inclusive pool of active members of AEGEE. Today, even though it is still mainly formed by former active members, it’s more inclusive and with a bigger variety of AEGEE members of different generations.
During their General Assemblies, the procedure is very similar to our AGORAe but of course shorter: presentation of activity or moral reports, presentation of budgets and accounts, membership, elections and then decision are made about what kind of events will happen during the next year. The GA is also combined with many social activities and cultural visits in the hosting city.
I was invited by Les Anciens to represent AEGEE-Europe during their General Assembly in Malta, first to update them on what is going on in AEGEE today, as you can imagine not everybody follows so actively as they used to, and to bring proposals from the new generation.
We heard that in this meeting the idea came up of having a database where AEGEE members can access information about which former AEGEE members are involved in different organisations, who are Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), etc. Can you tell us a bit more about this idea and how it works?
Yes. Les Anciens have just finished developing their new online system. With this system you can track former AEGEE members, by choosing the country where they live, company or institutions where they work, past experience in AEGEE etc. It is very handy, specially for the Comité Directeur which deals with many international institutions and as you can imagine having contacts inside can facilitate the process very much.
This tool will advance and facilitate very much our work and will give us direct access to a pool of support in different professional sectors.
In the General Assembly a new board was elected of Les Anciens. How do the elections work? Is it similar to what we see at the AGORA? And can you possibly inform us on what the board of Les Anciens does?
Yes. The same as at our AGORA, members of Les Anciens candidate for different positions, then they get questions and then the voting follows. The board of Les Anciens is mainly in charge of coordinating the organization of events: General Assemblies, Summer Events, Back 2 Brussels (a yearly event where Les Anciens visit the CD house in Brussels) etc. They also manage the membership lists, membership fees, new applications to enter LA, communication with AEGEE-Europe etc.
Besides the database and the elections, what did you do and discuss at the GA in Malta?
Many things were discussed from our side. First there were the updates on the recent happenings in the association in the past year. Then we started a debate about Les Anciens becoming the official alumni network of AEGEE-Europe. Even though it was not started with this purpose, the Comité Directeur acknowledges that Les Anciens is an already existing structure with a lot of potential and members already inside. This year the Comité Directeur has benefited very much from the help of Les Anciens, for example when moving the house, in legal matters, negotiating with the previous owner, dealing with conflict areas in Europe, doing policy and advocacy in Brussels, using their historic knowledge about AEGEE etc.
So this year Les Anciens have been very active and very valuable to our association. The CD recognizes the importance of having an official alumni network, first to support us thematically and content wise, but also financially with the different initiatives in AEGEE, and also to provide our members with support in their career paths. Most of our members are students finishing their studies and starting their careers. Having this advice, support and guidance of people who really understand our profiles and who have made it into big companies, institutions and other places can be really valuable for our Network.
The last thing discussed was the gap between Les Anciens and the young generation. Both sides are aware of the generational gap and have already proposed some concrete proposals like having the GA of Les Anciens at the same time as our AGORA in Patras in 2014 to ensure more visibility and a real representation of Les Anciens in some moments of our AGORA, and so members can see that Les Anciens has much more to offer.
The CD will also work with active European level members to develop an internal communication strategy to inform and attract younger members and make them aware of the benefits of becoming member of Les Anciens. Also AEGEE-Europe will have a much closer link with Les Anciens through different ways: membership cards for discounts, helping organize their GAs and events etc.
In general, how does the Comité Directeur work together with Les Anciens? Besides attending their GA do you have any specific projects/things you do together?
As I mentioned before, during the year the Comité Directeur consults a lot the former AEGEE members and Les Anciens members. When moving the house, Alexianne Galea (former Chair) and Markus Khory (former CD) where instrumental in guiding us with the Belgium law system. In Brussels, Christophe Leclreq (former CD, and Erasmus dinner) and Dan Luca (former CD), both of them working in Euractiv, have been of great help when doing policy and lobbying inside the European Commission. Burcu Bercemen (Honorary Member) is being crucial for us now when dealing with the conflicts in the Caucasus region . And the Les Anciens list is an endless source of AEGEE history. The intention of the CD is to put on aegee.org all the previous projects which we had in the past, both for external view, but also for our members to be aware that such amazing projects happened at one point. We also do the famous Back2Brussels event where Les Anciens visit the CD house. Les Anciens also provides financial support for different projects and assistants in the CD house.
So as you can see we are very happy with this very fruitful cooperation which we have had this year with Les Anciens. We are very happy that their GA has approved unanimously that they will become the official alumni network of AEGEE after so many years of debates. We have taken a very big step as an organization. Now the CD and Les Anciens will prepare an agreement and present it at the next AGORA for ratification of the network and work on a communication strategy for our members.
Written by Patricia Anthony, AEGEE-København