September is always a busy month in Brussels, with the restart of the Eurobubble activities and also plenty of initiatives starting in our network. Moreover, this year we have had, as an extra, the Planning Meeting in Genova and the first of the Y Vote 2014 conventions, plus a European-wide campaign for youth rights, amonth many other things. Get a glimpse in one month of Comité Directeur here.
LUIS ALVARADO MARTÍNEZ – President
September started very busy as expected. Our first stop was Genova for the Planning Meeting for preparing the transition towards our new strategic plan. Directly after Genova, I represented AEGEE in the EU Youth Conference in Vilnius, under the Lithuanian Presidency of the EU. The topic of this phase of the Structured Dialogue was focused on improving the situation of young people who are NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training).
Once back in Brussels, we had a lot of work in the office preparing different applications, and I was also invited to the EURODESK headquarters to present our new Y Vote 2014 project, in preparation of the upcoming European Parliamentary Elections in 2014. The project was very well received and EURODESK will be one of our key partners.
Directly after, I went with Lucille to Valladolid, where we officially kicked off the Y Vote 2014 project with the first convention on the topic of youth participation. The interaction between participants and the Member of the European Parliament was great, and the recommendations which came out of the event will be soon published.
Last but not least, directly from Valladolid I traveled with Miguel to Mollina (Malaga, Spain), where AEGEE-Europe hosted a Peace-building Training with young people from Caucasus at the 14th University on Youth and Development. The results and personal links created in this event were magical, so you can expect more Caucasus Peace initiatives coming soon.
LUCILLE RIEUX – Secretary General
September has been a very intense month to start the new year with! On the first day of the month, together with the team, I finished the Activity Report of my previous term as well as the Activity Plan of our term to come. We soon had to leave for Genova, where the planning meeting took place. I actively joined the discussion and workshops there, brainstorming and preparing the future Strategic Plan of the association.
Once back in Brussels, preparation of the upcoming kick off event of the Y Vote project, where I went as facilitator, took most of my time, together with dealing with some logistical preparation of the event. In Valladolid, we had a very fruitful and interesting meeting with 32 AEGEEans which will surely follow-up on the project in their local antenna.
I spent the end of the month at the University of Youth and Development in Mollina, Spain, where I attended a Training Course of the European Youth Forum, on Quality Assurance in Non Formal Education. While there I had plenty of ideas which will help me to reform the work of the Events Committee. During the last days of September, I was busy preparing several Youth in Action applications for the Y Vote project, and doing some work together with the Policy Officers.
ANNA GOTS – Financial Director
September for me was a drastic transition from more relaxed summer time to intensive work schedule.
It started with a planning meeting in Genova, where work didn’t finish even after sessions of the day were over, and continued with the deadline for publication of Activity Report, Activity Plan and of course Financial Report.
I left Genova one day earlier in order to join the Chair meeting at the house. And it was a very productive one, where in less then two days we managed to do the selection of participants, draft the preliminary agenda, the action plan for the upcoming month and have a fruitful discussion with the local organisers.
The next weekend I was already welcoming another team – of Audit commissioners and job-shadowers. Again, the efficiency of the meeting was quite high, and the whole audit was accomplished in one day, while the other day was used for more conceptual discussions – on the improvement of the financial skills in the Network and on the new bookkeeping software.
The rest of the month I dealt quite a lot with Agora preparations: collecting Activity Reports, being in constant contact both with the Chair team and the local organizers, arranging the first preparations for the booklets production together with Pavel and Madalena, last but not the least – calculating membership fees for the locals.
Besides this, I was coordinating the process of candidates selection for the ASRF (AEGEE Social Responsibility Fund) support.
Also, together with the Mediation Commission we started drafting new data protection policy for our organisation, which we’d hopefully present in Zaragoza.
During the last days of the month, I also contributed to the Youth Rights campaign by providing translation of the website for 2 languages, and helping sending out the letters to the ministers.
KATHRIN RENNER – Vice President and External Relations Director
September passed very fast. I spent the first couple of days with the rest of the CD at the planning meeting in Genova. Right after that, Agora preparations started, including Study Fair preparation: once again, it was time to send countless emails and contacting universities to attend the fair in Zaragoza. Together with the Identity Team, we finalised the proposals so that we can decide about a new Identity at Agora. Together with Luis and Anna, we also were working on the preparation EVA project, Erasmus Voting Assessment, which formally kicked of at the beginning of October. At the same time, together with Hara, Alma and Benni, we finalised the Key to Europe, looking for pictures, finishing articles and adding last details.
I was supporting Pavel with the Youth Rights campaign, contacting partner organisations to spread the campaign and promote it to their members. I also helped with the translation into German.
Finally, I was writing a grant proposal to OSIFE, Open Society Initiative for Europe, for additional funding for Europe on Track 2014, so we can support our travelers with subsistence while travelling and give support to the locals organising activities on the spot. We are still waiting for the result.
At the end of September, I took a couple of days off to finish my thesis and for some family time in Fürth.
BEÁTA MATUSZKA – Network and Human Resources Director
September started in a really special way: on the 1st of September I woke up in Helsinki and I continued my way to Tallinn to the second meeting of the Membership Growth Project. Directly from Tallinn, I flew to Genova to the fruitful and really interesting Planning Meeting. The period of this meeting was quite challenging, since the deadline of the members’ list submission fell on the first day of the event, hence I needed to spend many hours to cross-check the Agora applications and the members’ lists and board members from the last year, in order to support the Chair team to decide who is eligible to participate in Zaragoza.
After the Planning Meeting, I spent my whole month in Brussels (and this was basically the last long period before Christmas when I don’t travel to any meetings abroad), which gave me the chance to work hard on the preparation of the Agora and the term. We continued the Skype meetings with the Netcommies about the shape of the Network and about each and every antenna, we prepared the Contacts to become part of AEGEE-Europe and fulfill the necessary steps which lead to this. Moreover, I finalised the pre-Agora Network Status, supported the Network Meetings which will take place during Autumn, prepared tool kits and manuals for the sessions in order to help the trainers and standardize the knowledge that the participants can get. The Regional Training Course open call has been also issued after informing The Academy and the NetCom on how to support the process. Beside many other things, I continued the preparation of the European Level Meeting and I also met with partner NGOs to continue the cooperation and supported the Youth Rights campaign with translating the website to Hungarian.
PAVEL ZBORNIK – European Institutions and Communications Director
New term started with two deadlines for grant application and for Activity Plan and Report, and on top of it Planning Meeting in Genova, so it was quite hectic. This time we submitted application for next edition of New Media Summer School a prior event to European Dialog on Internet Governance and together with Kathrin we submitted partnership applications for a series of training organised by BEST and YEU International.
At the planning meeting, I finished designing the Activity Report, Activity Plan and Finncial Reports booklets; the design is based on Visual Identity and should bring more insight into what did last year and what we plan to do next. After Planning Meeting I had one week off to ‘re-charge my batteries’ before the intensive period until the Agora.
After my vacation, I spend most of the time finalizing the report of events which we organized in April and preparing YouthRights.NOW campaign which consumed most of my time. Preparing the website, coordinating translations and preparing promotional posts, all this in several languages. Right now we have a video of the campaign in 25 languages and text of the website in 17 languages, I would like to say a big thank you to all who helped with translations. In parallel of online activities, I was preparing letters to all ministers of Foreign affairs and Ambassadors towards the Council of Europe, which in total was more than 80 letters and together with the others we spend some time preparing the envelopes.
End of the month brought another deadline for grants, this time a combination of several different programs. I was helping with submitting application for European Youth Foundation and last call of Youth in Action.
MIGUEL GALLARDO – Projects Director
September was a month that started in the amazing city of Genova (Italy), where AEGEE celebrated its Planning Meeting and where we met with a group of extremely motivated members to have hours (literally) of discussions that ended up in six proposed topics. They will be put forward at the Agora and we hope that they will form a balanced and good Strategic Plan for AEGEE in 2014-17, so we can grow as an organization and have a real impact in those fields.
I also used the month to start getting used to my first steps as support to Pavel’s work in communication, mostly as Social Media Manager of AEGEE on Facebook and Twitter. It is something I really enjoy! We also worked, all together, for creating the final versions of the Activity Report 2012-13 and Activity Plan 2013-14 of our Comité Directeur team, so I hope you like them!
I had the opportunity to attend an event that I heard so many good things about: the University of Youth and Development, organised by the European Youth Forum and the North South center of the Council of Europe, in the CEUJAJ youth Center in Mollina, Spain. A very motivating environment and the ideal location for a Peace-building training aimed to settle the ground for a project with focus in the Caucasus area. We worked hard, we had great participants and some amazing trainers, and surely you will see the results soon.
And directly after Spain I flew to Warsaw, were I was to attend the OSCE Human Dimention Implementation Meeting (HDIM). But this will be part of next month stories…
MADALENA SOUSA – Research and Administrative Officer
A month for updates, getting into new challenges and readapting previous documents according with personal outcomes that we got from research.
Going to the Agora…Almost happening and this will be my first involvement and participation. In the CD House I got the opportunity to have a special meeting with some CD Members that were explaining in detail the structure of the event, how the preparation works, who is whom and all the relevant information I should know in order to support them in some specific tasks. According to this, I was already involved in the fair management and booklets.
As for the COY Project, I was very much focused on the preparation of partners. The event took place on the first weekend of October, however some work had to be done in advance such as: contributions and feedback for documents, readapting the strategy for the pan-European Database and Pool of Experts, etc. Also regarding the project I was giving support to the Experts Meeting that YEU with the collaboration of AEGEE organized in Mollina (SP) with the University on Youth and Development and drafting the next visibility event of this project that should be in Brussels next November or December.
Apart from these I was invited to be a facilitator at the CD meetings every week and was giving support to other AEGEE processes regarding education.