”You give me 10,000 days night of thunder but I will give them all back to you” – These are the words of a song by the Danish band Alphabeat and these exact words can well describe the dedication that AEGEE-Peiraias girl Hara Kogkou gives to the SUCT, if you replace the word thunder with summer.
The AEGEEan caught up with Hara Kogkou of the Summer University Coordination Team (SUCT) to get the answers why their project team should win the best project award 2012 (the award that rewards the best project team of 2011).
A brand new website
One of the biggest challenges for the SUCT was bulding a new web system going from 0 to 100 percent. However, they made it come true
and Raúl Avilés Poblador (the SUCT IT responsible of 2011) is the one to take the credits because due to his hard work the SUCT managed to have a functional system ready to host a big project such as the Summer University (SU). AEGEE was using a proprietary software system for the SU system until 2009. This is a system that you have to pay for but since there were no one paying for it the Comite Directeur has chosen to shut it down. This led to Raül receiving the task of creating an open source SU web system, which he successfully has done, and today the current SU website is running as a continuity of the previous one with improvements and changes.
Receiving patronage
In April 2011 the SUCT got the answer we had longed for when it was revealed that the Summer Universiy Project was going to be under the patronage of the Commissioner of Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, Androulla Vassiliou.
Ensuring quality
What Hara is especially proud of in connection with the SUCT’s work is their hard battle for increasing the quality of this project. For one the SUCT enforced every Summer University to have a theme throughout the duration of each event which was quite challenging but proved to be efficient when they saw the creations of Summer Universities with themes such as non-formal education, theatre, sports and much more.
Second of all the members of the SUCT used an impressive duration of two days to read and comment all the Summer University descriptions and programmes uploaded by the organisers in order to organise a Summer University. This way the SUCT had checked every Summer University and contacted the organisers for necessary changes before publishing them online and in the booklet
All this was part of setting the deadlines for the whole year in the beginning of a term which was another challenge as well, but the team managed to stick to them. What they really wished for was to have the SUCT always being on time and have everything ready according to the deadlines. They of course expected the same from the Network, and in the end it worked out just as planned.
Inspirational Summer University Project School 2011
The SUPS took place in Krakow organised by AEGEE-Krakow, the AEGEE-Academy and the SUCT under the YiA support! Hara says
about the event: “It was a very successful event from all sides: local organisers, leaded by Magda Maciejuk, did a great job and were offering us more than we expected! The participants were actually totally involved in the trainings and they were never complaining about the full daily programme.” Actually the participants enjoyed taking part so much that they returned and became active members of their antennae. Three of them participated in the ES2 in Castello, another is in the core team of organisers of the Agora Budapest, and others are the SU Coordinators and board members! The last but not the least, this event also motivated two participants from an Italian organisation to become AEGEE members. From the trainers point of view it was a very inspiring training having such participants that encouraged them to always want to offer more.
The term of this efficient SUCT 2011 ended in the Autumn Agora Skopje where the new team took over, but Hara assures that the current SUCT has continued the same path and are striving to be even better through a combination of using past experience and creative ideas of the new members.
Written by Patricia Anthony, AEGEE-København
Thanks to Hara Kogkou for contribution of pictures!