2016 for the first time in our Network was celebrated one of the most beautiful days: AEGEE Day. It was something new, but we all know that AEGEEans are very sensitive to all this kind of celebrations, so it was a success considering that they gathered and celebrated it all around Europe. This year AEGEE Day will take place again. It will be a day to have a new team with beautiful ideas and desire strongly to contribute to the project.
If you are a new member, then you might be asking yourself “What is this day?”. Well, it is a full day dedicated to our association and celebrated by organising activities related to one or more themes all over the Network. The 16th of April is the day when AEGEE was founded, so it cannot be another day that would suit as good as this day. Nevertheless, the activities can be organised during a week, not depending on a day only.
It was actually also posted a guideline with ideas for the activities. So the only thing that members had to do was to pick a day between 11th and 17th of April, an activity or even more than one, and put it in practice.
On the 16th of April 2016, more than 60 locals all over the Network celebrated it, gathering AEGEEans and making them spend some great moments together again.
In 2016, the focus was on one of the most important things for the association: Borderless Europe. Thus, the activities were designed in such a way to break borders all over Europe, not only between countries but also employment borders, mobility borders, language borders, cultural borders, inequality borders and participation borders.
For each of this sub-topics, the activities were explained and were also assigned a level of difficulty, so 1 in green was “super easy peasy”, 2 in yellow – “doable”, 3 in purple – “getting a bit difficult” and 4 in red was “a challenge”.
There were a lot of activities organised last year, from all the levels of difficulty, and here we can see the impact that AEGEE Day had in the Network and how popular it was in different countries.
For this year, there is a new team, eager to work for this project and share their ideas with us all.
Suzan Dilara Tokaç, AEGEE-Eskişehir: I am a dedicated volunteer and adventurer. I am growing up every year with new opportunities that AEGEE has been offering. I was on the team last year and was impressed by the potential and power of our united Network so much that I would like to take it one step further.
Katharina Jiménez Weese, AEGEE-Bamberg & LIG: I loved the idea and the implementation of the AEGEE Day last year and with joining the AEGEE Day team I hope that I can contribute to making this year’s edition successful again!
Maria Mariș, AEGEE-Cluj-Napoca & CEWG: I love the idea of AEGEEans doing the same things at the same time in different places!
Marta Pąk, AEGEE-Warszawa: I love celebrations, and AEGEE Day is a great opportunity to show that we have something to say and a lot to do and to recognise the hard work of our volunteers during the whole year.
Lia Touska, AEGEE-Sofia, appointed Comité Directeur member: I love the idea of AEGEE Day and that is why I helped the team last year, so now I am part of the AEGEE Day team.
Katharina said that they started working since December already and “since then we distributed the tasks, set the timeline, brainstormed about the theme and we planned the live meeting. As this year the AEGEE Day falls on the Easter week, there will be one week of celebration, starting on 16th April, the actual AEGEE Day.”
As well as last year, we found out that there will be a guideline for the activities, for which they will cooperate with European Bodies, and it will be involving the current and the new Focus Areas. Regarding the theme, everything will be announced soon.
Katharina also wanted to add that “although this may seem like a simple series of activities, the AEGEE Day is certainly a simulation of what AEGEE is built on, strives for and advocates since the day it has been founded. We are looking forward to all the nice activities that will be happening all around Europe!”
We wish them all the best luck, and let’s hope that more locals and more activities will be there this year for AEGEE Day!
Written by Raluca Radu, AEGEE-Cluj-Napoca