Civic Education Working Group Coordinator for 57th Agora AEGEE-Europe
With the Agora right around the corner we at The AEGEEan are interviewing the candidates to give you an small insight into who the person is behind the face. Here we have with us Zeynep Ozan, running for the CEWG coordinator position of AEGEE Europe.
Can you say something about yourself? What was the moment you realized AEGEE is for you?
I am Zeynep, 24 years old master student, enjoy reading caricature magazines, do sports, especially love to swim, visit museums, paint and travel. There is no exact moment which made me realize that AEGEE is for me, rather there is a process in which I realized that how much I enjoy to be a part of it. I joined the LTC-Ankara where I learned a lot about AEGEE and met amazing people. Afterwards, I elected as the secretary for SUPS and this project engaged me more to the AEGEE; we worked till the midnights, shared and laughed a lot. I also met with amazing friends during the events, via my work on civic education and in AEGEE-Berlin currently in my Erasmus. These, in total, made me decide that AEGEE is for me and it is more than a student organization.
What area of Civic Education would you like to focus on as a member of the WG? What are some of your skills that help fit this role?
I want to focus on the social inclusion part and also want to raise awareness on social and political issues since I have experience in both areas by delivering lectures to refugee children and youth, volunteering in social responsibility projects and a thematic knowledge coming by studying International Relations. I believe that these can provide me a basis for conducting my work If I elected.
You have an impressive list of professional achievements for a person so young, and you have attributed a lot of this success to your experience in AEGEE. What would be your advice to other AEGEEans to make the most of the opportunities that the association provides?
Based on my experience within the AEGEE, being active in local sense is a good starting point. Besides, those who are interested in social, political and environmental issues can join into WG or IG’s to have a better understanding of AEGEE and its focus areas. It is how I managed to grasp a better understanding of the organization and had the opportunity to develop myself in an international environment. AEGEE provides abundant opportunities for us from conferences to themed events and meetings. To widen our horizons, coming up with new ideas and meeting great people I think our organization is offering a lot for every interest area.
Motivation is a key success factor for a project. What are some ways in which you could keep the motivation high within the network?
Being active in AEGEE is what keeps me motivated because it is how I learn new things from people. Besides my project at my local, I also regularly joined other project meetings and our board meetings which I get the opportunity to join discussions with experienced members and deepened my knowledge of project management and also on AEGEE. Also CEWG meetings are motivating me in terms of seeing the achievements the WG made and brainstorming for new ideas to improve our work. All of these motivates me to produce and contribute.
If not elected, which of the other candidates would you like to take over your position? Why?
There are two other persons, Izabella and Aynur, for this position and I think they both are good candidates regarding to their achievements. I would say Aynur, because she is a member to the CEWG and she already has knowledge on the area of civic education. She is active and I also know her in person. In this sense, I would prefer her.
You have entered into AEGEE at the ending of 2018, but you have a huge background! According with that, what are the best things you can give to AEGEE?
With the experience and network I gained through my studies and my active participation in social events in different organizations -which are also related to the EU and UN initiatives- I have plans on the issues related to the CEWG as I explained in my Programe. I believe that the institutions and organizations such as Ministries, NGO’s and Universities I have contacted with previously, could help me to improve our events on specific issues on the concerns of active citizenship, democratic participation, quality education, SDG’s and more by providing facilities, expertise and content. In this regard, I want to work for opening up new opportunities for our network via the help of an active communication with the institutions related to our WG.
Taking the program for your candidature for CEWG in the Spring Agora of Bucharest, one of the objectives you defend is the more collaboration with other WG and IG. Is there any particular idea you can put as an example based on real situations?
I observed that although there are several WG and IG’s, in general, we are dealing close issues with one another. I examined the works of other WG’s and what I found is that there are even objectives on the same topics. So why not to combine our forces to create a bigger impact? Starting from this point of view, to create collaborations within the network would help our members get more familiar and engaged with the issues we are dealing all together under the umbrella of AEGEE regarding to the Action Agenda. In relation to the CEWG’s concern area of creating awareness, being able to combine and understand the relevance of the social issues we are dealing with in the WG’s and IG’s is another skill that we need to enhance to my opinion. Regarding to the concrete examples; as the CEWG we are emphasizing and representing the importance of education. To achieve this aim, prospective collaborations with the WG and IG’s in planning thematic workshops and conferences would make strong tools to increase the impact. As I mentioned in my Programe under each of my points there is a related WG and/or IG that can give support to the related subject. For instance, one of my plans to create thematic simulations on SDG’s need specific information regarding to the UN Climate Act. In terms of realizing the SDG’s, Society and Environment Interest Group of AEGEE would provide the necessary information in this field to the CEWG to conduct workshops in better expertise. As another example, there can be the contribution of the Migration IG and Politics IG of AEGEE for the workshops and/or conferences on the topics of democratic participation and refugee issues in terms of expertise and thematic workshops. If applied, I believe that these collaborations would be complimentary for realizing the concerns of the CEWG and at the same time increase the capacity of the WG as well.
Active Citizenship, Political Awareness and Newspaper Initiative are also important points of your program. The point about Newspaper Initiative sounds interesting. Could you describe in which consist? Could be done with other social media?
Newspaper Initiative in my Programe is basically an initiative to encourage young people to write about the political and social changes or issues matter to them in their cities/region or globally. This initiative is complying with the CEWG’s concerns, especially the areas of active citizenship, democratic participation, critical thinking and media. So, I believe that this would create a positive impact among AEGEEans to raise awareness and express their ideas as well as influence their fellows to act on the topic matter them. It is a fact that every city, region and country in the world are dealing with different political and social issues such as housing, social security, education, environment and health system etc. and the concerns of the AEGEEans may differ from one to another. So, rather than asking young people to write about the same global issues, a platform which they can reflect their opinions about the current political and social development in their cities/regions would be interesting to hear. This would allow us to learn the concerns of people in a more local sense and raise awareness among the youth with regard to the situations in other European cities. I used the name “newspaper” because it is about sharing the news. This can be done on an online platform which would be more environmentally friendly and more easy to access. We have monthly newspaper and AEGEEan magazine. These platforms can be used or a separate online newspaper could be created with regard to this aim.
There are two points that are also important in the current days: SDG’s and Social Inclusion. Underlying the last one, as you have experience as a volunteer at the Izmir Refugee Center during the Syrian Refugee Crises of 2010s, what members can learn about working with this kind of people and how they act?
My experience as a volunteer at the Refugee Support Center (RSC) in İzmir has had a great impact in my life in terms of showing me the power of education on social groups, in understanding what challenges those people experienced- and are still experiencing-,and gave me a chance to work for beautiful people. Syrian Crisis is neither the first nor it is going to be the last crisis on the world stage. There are too many challenging issues on politics, environment, economy etc. going on around the world every single day and there are other refugee groups as well. To put directly an impact in terms of policy-making in each of these issues for each refugee group is hard, but at least with student associations, NGO’s and organizations like AEGEE, we can strengthen our societies in this global world without considering the borders and especially work to eliminate negative and xenophobic discourses on the refugee challenge, particularly on the Syrian refugee challenge which is the hot topic. Those people need assistance in building up their lives again. Education is an important part of their needs for their survival and for healthy societies, that’s why I associated it with CEWG. To get into contact with Syrian refugees and share social occasions with them would enhance our members’ awareness about this topic and get them familiar with the challenges those people confront in their everyday lives. This would help us to understand their needs and to create opportunities for a better future for all. At least based on my experiences I can say that they are open to learn, make new friends and love social occasions. Providing opportunities for Syrian refugees would make them aware of their rights in their new societies, build new friendships with different perspectives and rather than feeling themselves isolated they may be encouraged to take an active role in the society to contribute its development with social inclusion.
Finally, in case you are not elected, what are you plans in the future?
If I am not selected, surely I will continue to contribute to AEGEE through my local work as well as through my work in the field of Impact Measurement on the European level. My short term plan is to work on my thesis to finish it earlier than I planned in order to spare myself some free time to travel and participate in youth events. As a long term plan, I would search for international internships related to my interest areas.