Just like we did for the last two Agorae (namely Spring Agora Patra and Autumn Agora Cagliari) this year again we want to provide you with a short and easy summary of the proposals submitted for Spring Agorasturias. In this round, we will explain you three proposals that will affect the Antennae Criteria, one of them specifically clarifying what happens if a local modifies its Statutes. Read more about ‘Antenna Criteria: Restructuring and Improvements’, ‘Making Activity Report and Activity Plan coherent to board term’ and ‘Modification of the Statutes of Locals’.

The first two proposals were submitted by Andrea Schmelz and Mario Galea on behalf of the Network Commission. The first one, ‘Antenna Criteria: Restructuring and Improvements’, wants to restructure the Antennae Criteria in order to make it easier for locals to find which are all the criteria that they have to fulfill. Right now, if you are an Antenna, you have to follow the criteria to become an Antenna too. What this proposal wants to do, is to separate the criteria to become a Contact, to become a Contact Antenna, to remain a Contact Antenna, to become an Antenna and to remain an Antenna in order for locals to find them easier, without changing their content. Besides that, there are also some content changes that will make some criteria more clear. The changes made in this proposal can be found here.

The second proposal, ‘Making Activity Report and Activity Plan coherent to board term’, intends to clarify and cohere when the Activity Report and the Activity Plan should be sent. Right now, the Activity Plan is sent by the new board one month after their election, stating their future plans. Once per year, they send the Activity Report where they present the achievements of the year that passed. The Comité Directeur and Network Commission use this information to make sure that the locals are doing well. In order to make it clear when the new board should send the Activity Plan, the proposers suggest to have the new board send their Activity Plan one month after they start their term instead of the election, since some boards begin their term several weeks after the elections. The Activity Report would then be sent after the board term is over. You can find all the changes of this proposal here.

The third proposal, ‘Modification of the Statutes of Locals’, is submitted by Joris Veenhuis, Claudio Gennaro and Glòria Llopart on behalf of the Juridical Commission and aims to ensure the equality between AEGEE-Europe and the locals. How? When a local modifies its statutes, they should send them to Juridical Commission. Why? AEGEE-Europe and the locals have signed the Convention d’Adhesion (CdA), the partnership contract between two associations which are engaged to be clear to each other. Locals are aware of the changes in AEGEE-Europe’s statutes since they must be approved at an Agora. However, after the first approval of the statutes, which happens before a local signs the CdA, AEGEE-Europe can only access the statutes of the locals upon demand. This is inequitable. If a local changes its statutes in a way that does not follow AEGEE-Europe’s principles, AEGEE-Europe will only know if a member exposes that issue. With this proposal, future problems about statutes can be avoided. All changes made to achieve that can be found here.

Written by Lia Tuska, AEGEE-Sofia/Thessaloniki

The Comité Directeur 2014 – 2015 of AEGEE-Europe, also known as CD52, is back at the Brussels head office, ready to continue the implementation of their Activity Plan and the initiatives they are involved in. They will not be alone though, because they can count on the help of several home-based assistants, who will support the CD in some relevant areas, ranging from website management to data analysis, network development, policy monitoring and more. The AEGEEan is reviewing some of the priorities that the Comité Directeur will have throughout 2015 until the end of their term, which YOU can also contribute to!

The Strategic Plan, a “top priority”

The new Strategic Plan 2014/17 has just started this new term. Therefore, according to the CD’s Activity Plan, implementing the new Focus Areas in AEGEE will be “a top priority”. As youth unemployment is still on the rise in Europe, the Focus Area of Youth Employment will be one of the key issues of this current Strategic Plan, and the Comité Directeur plans to bring up the topic to the Network in several ways, such as the second edition of the Youth unEmployment project. Concerning Youth Mobility, a special focus will be drawn, especially after the deletion of the Visa Freedom Working Group (VFWG). Three CD assistants will work in close cooperation in order to review the guidelines as written by the VFWG and update them.

Moreover, AEGEE-Europe’s Policy Officers will have a very relevant role in the process, since AEGEE is going to have to define its position on the Focus Areas and do advocacy accordingly, after being officially established in the CIA at Agora Cagliari. The Action Agenda Coordination Committee (ACT) will also play a relevant part by ensuring the fulfillment of the Action Agenda 2014 – 2015, and will have a big involvement in drafting the following one at EPM Burgos in February.

Launch and implementation of “new” platforms

AEGEE’s Forum was re-established right after Agora Cagliari, which brought the Network to discuss  about which platform would be the best one in order to bring back discussions online in AEGEE. The Comité Directeur will continue the implementation and promotion of the Forum, as well as the Members’ Portal, which was officially launched at Agora Cagliari. Several projects and European bodies use it in order to share information about their work and involve their members.

Moreover, 2015 could bring the new Online Membership System to life, as a replacement of our current Intranet. According to the Activity Plan, the OMS is expected to be launched at the upcoming AgorAsturias. Moreover, the AEGEE Wiki will be developed, as an information database that will gather all kinds of information, from general information about AEGEE to specific working procedures.

Discussion about AEGEE’s organizational culture and structure

Now that the new AEGEE identity has been implemented as a way to present AEGEE externally, the current CD sees it’s time to focus on the internal structure of AEGEE and how the different bodies are connected with each other. Therefore, they have planned to consult the different European bodies about their needs and relations among them, and map them, as well as to start a discussion on its organizational culture.

Moreover, this year will see the follow-up of the introduction of the secretariat strategy. The Comité Directeur is currently researching the possibilities to outsource some of their current administrative tasks to the Secretariat and funding possibilities, in order to ensure professionalism and continuity in the organization.

Strengthening quality assurance and non-formal education

The impact measurement process was recently introduced to AEGEE, and the process of gathering data about the impact of several aspects of AEGEE’s work will be followed up with throughout this year. The same applies to the quality assurance of our events. Since the establishment of EQAC, the committee has constantly been improving and it will ensure that the quality of our events is properly monitored.

What’s more, the Comité Directeur will have a big involvement in the ongoing processes of the validation of non-formal education, with initiatives such as GR-EAT (which stands for “Guidelines for Recognition – European Advanced Tool”), a Life-Long Learning project, where AEGEE is one of the management partners. The COY Project, aimed at striving for the recognition of Youth Workers, is currently coming to an end, so AEGEE will follow up on this project, together with its partners. The recognition of volunteering will also continue, in order to ensure that volunteer work is valued and recognized.

Human Resources and on-line trainings

A lot of attention will be paid to the Human Resources status of AEGEE through initiatives like the Membership Growth Project, which aims to help antennae with their membership strategies in order to become more sustainable. Currently, the locals who will take part in the pilot phase of the MGP are being selected. AEGEE will also bring trainings to the whole Network, as the first webinars and online trainings for AEGEE members are currently being developed.

…and most importantly, involving YOU

These are only some of the things that will keep the Comité Directeur busy in 2015. However, their main priority is no other than to involve you in these processes! From project management opportunities, to helping them define the organisational culture of AEGEE, applying as a home-based assistant, supporting the discussions in the forum or taking part in the consultations about several advocacy processes and policy areas. There are several areas you can support the work of the Comité Directeur in, and AEGEE members are the ones who shape the organisation, so don’t be afraid to take an active role in defining it!

Written by Anna Gumbau, AEGEE-Barcelona

As many board members already know, each local has to submit an annual report about the events that they organised, as required in the antenna criteria. But what about the plans for the future? The General Subvention from the European Commission represents around 40% of AEGEE-Europe’s annual budget, and the application for this grant has to include the activity plans of locals as well. This was the issue raised by Pavel Zborník, European Institutions and Communications Director of AEGEE-Europe, who proposed (on behalf of the Comité Directeur) to include the submission of a yearly Activity Plan in the antenna criteria.

The AEGEEan: Could you, please, sum up the main points of the proposal?

Pavel: I think the point of the proposal is quite clear: I would like to make sure that my successor – meaning not just the successor dealing with the operational grant – will have enough information about what members of our Network plan to do during the following year. Such information is also very interesting for the Network Commission, at least from what I’ve seen during my experience in the NetCom.
This proposal has two aims: the first one is to get information from locals about their planned activities, and the second is more or less the introduction of a planning system in AEGEE. Obviously, if you want to achieve something, it is very important to know how, this is why we need plans. I believe that our locals are able to achieve very good results, and this rule would help them in this by incenting them to set a concrete plan for their activities. I’m sure that for most locals, this is already a common practise and it will not create any problems for them. As for the rest, together with the NetCom we will help to start this process by providing all the necessary information and knowledge about the planning process.

Why did you see the need for the proposed changes?

Right now, submitting a report of activities from the previous period is included  in the antenna criteria, but we don’t require locals to also submit a plan for the future, and this is a bit strange for me. As the person responsible for submitting the application for the General Subvention, I can only kindly ask locals for such kind of information – the information that I need to write this application, and therefore secure necessary funding for AEGEE-Europe.

So how will AEGEE and AEGEE members benefit from it?

You might know that the operational grant from the Youth in Action is 50 000 €, which in my eyes is a quite visible result. As I mentioned earlier, by introducing  requirement for planning, locals will have more precise ideas about what they will organise during the upcoming year. And this would also help us in order to manage our big Network.

Writte by Zsófia Komáromi, AEGEE-Budapest