The Network Meetings (NWM) taking place in Poland have been receiving many critics for a while because of the high number of participants. However, the Network Commissioner for this area, Mateusz Dokurno, and AEGEE-Zielona Góra have been working for a long time for the upcoming Autumn Network Meeting to ensure it will be of high quality despite being organized for 150 participants.

AEGEE-Zielona Góra will organize a Network Meeting for up to 150 participants between 13-16^th of November, close after the Autumn Agora Cagliari. The AEGEEan interviewed the Network Commissioner of thes area, Mateusz Dokurno, and Bartosz Sudorowski who is the Vice President & FR responsible of AEGEE-Zielona Góra.

Mateusz is already very excited about the Network Meeting. “I know that all my locals are very experienced and highly motivated to organize this kind of events and I am absolutely sure that Autumn Network Meeting Zielona Góra 2014 will be brilliantly organized logistically (and of course content as well)  just like all other activities organized by them in the past”, he tells to The AEGEEan.

The exact number of participants has not yet been decided and Mateusz says it will probably be 100-120 participants divided into two groups , who will benefit from slightly different sessions. The first group will be dedicated to board members and the most experienced participants and the second one to all other highly motivated members. This concept was tested during the Spring Network Meeting Silesia and the NetCom of this area got positive feedback, so of course Mateusz wants to develop the idea together with his SubCommies and the organization team of AEGEE-Zielona Góra.

However, as mentioned before, many people are of the opinion that the Network Meetings are too big. But Mateusz does not believe that the number of participants makes the Network Meeting organized in Poland of less quality than any others. “I don’t hear opinions about reducing the number of participants of Agora and EBM and in our event we also have a lot of AEGEE spirit. Remember that during prytanium at Agora Rhein-Neckar (introduction of regions) current Comité Directeur (CD) showed Network Meetings in my area as great example of cooperation within the Network, so they gave a clear signal to us that it is not only the strength of my area, this is the strength of all of us, of all AEGEE!” he says.

Now that the Comité Directeur is changing, it means that Mateusz is working closely with the CD elect, Aleksandra Kluczka (Ola), to whom he introduced the most important matters about the upcoming Network Meeting and invited her to Skype Meetings with his SubCommies. He tells us that she was a really valuable part of the meetings. “I am very excited about the next months and cooperation with all other CD members as well, especially Holger Schmitt, as Network Director, and Ola of course”.

About the hosting antenna: AEGEE-Zielona Góra is a local of 30 members where the majority of them, around 20, are active and they describe their members as very young and motivated. The specialty of this city is the wine tradition, which is why the NWM is named “Back to the roots”. Of course there are more special things about the city, but Bartosz Sudorowski tells The AEGEEan and the rest of the Network that one has to come to the city to discover them. On the question of why they took up the challenge of organizing the Autumn NWM, Bartosz said to The AEGEEan “Our local needs a bigger project. We have a lot of local projects that are small. Our members need new tasks, and more ambitious projects. AEGEE-Zielona Góra organized a NWM four years ago, and we want to show to the new generation of AEGEEans how beautiful Zielona Góra is and how strong our local is.”

It has been well-known for a while that AEGEE-Zielona Góra is going to organize the Autumn NWM and the antenna  already has several details arranged. There are patrons arranged, like the Mayor of the city, Marshall and Rector. Then there are a few sponsors and almost all locations like the gym, classrooms for workshops, clubs for the social program are all set. Now AEGEE-Zielona Góra is working with the NetCom and Mateusz’s team on the methodological part. For that they are gathering a group of trainers for the workshops, panel discussions and open spaces. They will lso invite a specialist of social sciences. The team wants to prepare a panel about the demographic crisis in Europe.

There is a large team of people working on this Network Meeting, Bartosz tells The AEGEEan. “We have two coordinators: Damian Wójcik, and Mateusz Sadowski. Bartosz Sudorowski is our FR-responsible, Marta Kowalewicz PR-responsible, Jakub Ostalec – IT, Monika Duda – Incoming, Marta Dziklińska – Facebook responsible. The rest of our team is made up of 12 more members, and we have very good news. We have five places for helpers! So wait for the open call and apply.”

Besides the Network Meeting, AEGEE-Zielona Góra has organised other activities lately. One month ago, they cooperated with DKMS Poland and the Polish league of Volleyball, and they registered potential bone marrow donors, as part of the campaign that the local has been carrying for the past months and that gave them the nomination of Most inspiring local activity in the past The AEGEEan’s Choice Awards.

Now, during summer, many of the members are off for some well-deserved vacation but soon a lot of action will start again, especially with the Network Meeting approaching soon.

Written by Patricia Anthony, AEGEE-Zaragoza

Throughout the AEGEE Network inspiring local activities are being organized every year and The AEGEEan decided to honor this for The AEGEEan’s Choice Awards 2014. Therefore five antennae are nominated for the “Most inspiring local activity” category.

AEGEE-Warszawa is nominated for the “Don’t talk to strangers – or do” activity. The AEGEEan interviewed Izabela Rudnicka (the coordinator of the project). “I came up with the idea of the project when applying for a summer school in New York. The essay questions made me think about equality and all my experiences with people disliking others just because of their foreign nationality.” The project consisted of a series of meetings with foreigners living in Poland, talking about their culture and their emigration experience. It was meant to broaden the horizons of people and fight the prejudice. There were mostly AEGEE members involved in the activities, but everybody else was also invited to come and discuss. “We struggled with finding a venue and getting people interested in the project, but we will definitely repeat it. Maybe we can even expand it to include more social groups against which prejudice exists in Poland,” Izabela tells The AEGEEan.

AEGEE-Tenerife has also been very active in the society and is nominated for the promotion of voluntarism and trying to help Tenerife to become the European Youth Capital 2015. The local municipality summoned all youth associations by the end of November 2011 to propose the idea of running for the contest to become European Youth Capital 2015. “Our president, Tayri Campo volunteered to be the youth representative for the project. That year, we were rejected on the first round. However, there was already collaboration among the youth associations and it was us this time who decided that we would like to run a second time, but this time in a more organized way. She was also the youth representative for the next year and the coordinator of La Laguna Youth Forum. So it was a project lasting from November 2011 to November 2013.” AEGEE-­Tenerife boosted the creation of a platform called La Laguna Youth Forum to promote the collaboration among the associations and to make it easy for other young people to participate either in the European Youth Capital Project or in any other of their organizations as they gained visibility. “Some of the things we are more fond of is the promotional video. We created the script and were lucky to know some young professionals in filming and editing who were willing to collaborate. We also had an exchange with AEGEE-Thessaloniki, hosting them here to know about the good practices of Thessaloniki to become the current European Youth Capital in 2014 and them hosting us during the final ceremony in Thessaloniki. Next to that, we had a trip to the European Parliament and the Committee of Regions in Brussels to present our project and look for support.

Several members of AEGEE-Tenerife also participated in the forum as IT managers and designers. “It was a lot of work trying to organize activities among associations as each of us had their own internal activities in the organization so, it was like having the double amount of work. It was also difficult to concentrate all personal objectives into a global one as many people were involved. Concerning data it was needed to do a thorough study of statistics in the municipality to look for the most important needs for young people.” And even though AEGEE-Tenerife did not become the Youth Capital they still gained from the project. “First of all young people are more connected, networking has improved and we have worked together and learnt about what other associations do. This and the platform are the most important things we have gained. Also we have gained more experience about European level projects and learnt a lot about politics for youth on an European Level and the previous Youth in Action programme. We also feel that young people who participated in EYC are much more aware about the opportunities Europe has and what they can do to take advantage of them and develop an active role.”

The AEGEEan also talked with AEGEE-Zaragoza about their collaboration with the Food Bank (Banco de Alimentos). Carlota Castel from AEGEE-Zaragoza says “It was Silvia Sánchez who suggested to collaborate with this project back in 2012. She managed to organise our chaotic schedules so all of us could participate in the activity.” The Food Bank is a non-profit charitable organisation that distributes food to those who have economical problems to put food on the table.

Members of AEGEE-Zaragoza spent the day in supermarkets talking to people about the importance of donating and also collected the food. Since 2012 it has been organized again in December 2013 and it is the reason why AEGEE-Zaragoza is nominated for “Most inspiring local activity”. Up to 20 members of AEGEE-Zaragoza took part in the activity which was published in the Facebook group of the antenna and a lot of rookies were happy to get involved in the activity, even if they didn’t have a lot of time to work for AEGEE itself. “It is good to know that they are there when we are dealing with something important,” Carlota says. The success will of course be repeated next year. “This is an annual event and we are eager to mobilise more members and friends next year.”

AEGEE-Brescia is nominated for the “European Talks” activity, which was an idea by Michele Turati. Every year, AEGEE-Brescia’s team applied for funds from the university in order to let some prestigious speakers come to Brescia to deliver a lecture about different important topics regarding Europe. The 4th edition of European Talks were given once per week and the period was from September 2013 until December 2013. The “talks” are just small conferences. Each talk is divided in two parts: the first is a speech of a invited speaker, the second part is a debate/discussion. Participants have the opportunity to talk with the speaker during the talk. The aims of the “talks” are to examine European topics and problems of students, especially of European citizens.

The super motivated team of AEGEE-Brescia as organizers and many AEGEE members as speakers took part in the activity in the autumn of 2013 (Sabiha Kapetanovic, Alexandra Vilcu, Vytoria Voytsekhovska, Lea Charlet, Karolina Mazetyte, Miguel Gallardo Albajar). Michele Minuti tells The AEGEEan about the challenges: “The speakers are involved in AEGEE projects or working groups and the main challenge was to promote them in Brescia, showing how much AEGEE is full of opportunities. Every year we get new motivated members by this activity.” Despite the challenges, the success of this activity will also be repeated. “We have already requested money from the University for the 5th Edition. Gunnar Eath, Szabina Hellinger, Maria Arends, Veronika Velkovska will be the speakers for the new edition and they will talk about non-formal education, media, Erasmus+ and human rights.”

AEGEE-Zielona Gora is also nominated for organizing “Bone marrows day donation” activity. However, it has unfortunately not been possible for The AEGEEan to obtain information about the activity.

Written by Patricia Anthony, AEGEE-Zaragoza