It has already been proven that AEGEE-Alicante can serve as an example to be an awesome local. They manage to organise a lot of local activities, their Summer University was the 2nd ranked last year and they have a lot of members involved in many AEGEE-Europe bodies. Besides that, their contribution to the Action Agenda, acquiring certificates with ECTS recognition (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System, creditation for academic competences in Europe) from the University of Alicante, has made them become ACTive Local of the Month of February. We interviewed Melissa Carreres, President of the antenna and one of the main executors of the successful Buddy Program.

The AEGEEan: First of all, congratulations! You contributed to get certificates for mentors for your Buddy Program, which is the reason you were chosen as ACTive Local of the Month. Can you tell us more about these certificates?
Melissa: Many thanks! This recognition makes us feel very happy, because this program has lots of work behind it. This is the second year we are doing the Buddy Program in Alicante; we organise a new edition every semester. As you may know, it’s a mentorship program which aim is to provide support to international students by pairing them with local students who help them to settle in during their stay in Alicante. This program is offered to all students, not just AEGEE members. We thought it would be great if we could recognise somehow the great labour of integration done by more than 500 students from the university. We are currently working on the certificates of the previous and the present edition and we will deliver them soon. We will do the same for the organisers whose labour has been the key of success. But what is more, we’ve got a learning agreement with the university and they will recognise up to 1 ECTS for buddies and 2 ECTS for organisers, which is more than a really great achievement for us. Nevertheless, students are interested in the program even without knowing about this recognition, but of course, this makes the Buddy Program even sexier!

Your Buddy Program is an outstanding example of great cooperation with the university. Can you tell us a bit about it? How did you achieve this level of cooperation?
It was an idea we had for a long time. We heard that other antennae were doing it and we wanted to bring it to our university. Two years ago, Pablo Hernández, who then was our President, contacted the International Mobility department and they showed interest in the program. After several meetings and although the setting was not easy at all, we could finally start with it. At first, as a test, we started with a small group of international student. It went pretty well, so after gaining the International Mobility department’s trust, they decided to open the program to everyone (Erasmus and international students). In this current edition, at least 80% of the incoming students have applied for the program. This program has grown a lot and the results we are getting are amazing. We are very happy and the mobility department is giving us a lot of support. Since we started, they have asked us to present the programme in the welcome talks for International Students, they have printed PR materials such as posters and stickers and also, as you know, we have got the agreement to certificate and recognise the skills and work of the participants!

Also, we have a good relationship with ESN, so besides the Buddy Program, we did another project with them: a Guide for International Students. This guide collects lots of useful tips for foreign students who comes to Alicante for the first time. The International Mobility department has printed lots of them and has delivered it to all the internationals students.

Are you willing to collaborate by spreading this project to help other antennae to do the same?

La Tripulación, the NetCom team of our area, thought it would be useful for other antennae and asked us to develop a guide about the program with all the organisational details, so other AEGEEans could have all the information. We agree that it can be beneficial for other antennae, specially for those who are working on establishing good relationships with their university. In our case, it has been one of the biggest projects we have done so far and it has brought many benefits. We have the support and a good relationship with the university, it’s good for member recruitment, very different from the SU campaigns, it has given us visibility and recognition through the university community and in addition, some people who have joined AEGEE because of the program, seem to be potential active members.

Why do you think the Action Agenda is important to the Network, and what would you say to another local that is thinking about organising something related to the Action Agenda?

What makes AEGEE different from other associations is just that. The Action Agenda is about what we want to achieve in AEGEE and it’s something every antennae should include in their Activity Plan. Without it, AEGEE would lose its essence. We are the ones who decide during the EPM what we will do, so why not contribute to something we are trying to reach as organisation? Organising an activity related to the Action Agenda doesn’t mean it should be a complicated activity. Sometimes it happens that you are organising a fun activity and you don’t realise you are actually contributing to the Action Agenda!

Are you planning to organise more activities related to the Strategic Plan and Action Agenda?

We have already started with our SU campaign, which is going to take almost all our time and energy but we like to organise other activities, especially if they contribute to the SP and AA. In fact, next week, we are doing an exchange with AEGEE-Eindhoven. They are coming to Alicante and we will show them around and visit some special places. Since the 22nd of March is the World Water Day, we will do some activities related to it with them.

Regarding the Buddy program, the next milestone we want to achieve is for participants of the Buddy Program to get preference (or extra points) in the application process of the Erasmus program. We know that it has been done in some Universities, so hopefully, we will get it too.

Nevertheless, we will keep on promoting awareness among our members and participating in benefic campaigns as we have done so far, like for example, the last Blood Donation Marathon or the bike marathon against the climate change and the melting of the polar ice caps.

A few years back, AEGEE-Dresden was erased from the list of antennae. Luckily, in the beginning of 2014, it became a Contact of AEGEE-Europe again and just a few days ago, Dresden was officially promoted to Contact Antenna at Agora Cagliari. Although these events are quite recent and the number of active members is limited, Dresden managed to build up a very successful Buddy Program for international students. The AEGEEan talked to Ingo Kaiser, current treasurer of the contact antenna, about the history and plans of AEGEE-Dresden and especially about their extraordinary Buddy Program.

In 2003 already, AEGEE-Dresden was established but became inactive seven years later due to a lack of active members. When Ingo Kaiser, by then already an experienced AEGEE member because of his work in AEGEE-Aachen, moved to Dresden in the beginning of 2014, he was very pleased when he found out that Jorge Sánchez Hernández, from AEGEE-Alicante, had registered a Contact of AEGEE-Europe in Dresden just a few weeks before. That was the first step to reviving AEGEE-Dresden! “We worked very hard in the last few months to start activities, gain members, transfer the old registered association from 2003 from the old board to the recent one, get funding from the University and prepare everything for the signing of the Convention d’Adhésion at Agora Cagliari”, Ingo tells us.

It was not an easy task to revive the old antenna, because they were lacking members and therefore were running out of time every single day. They had to deal with quite a number of obstacles, the biggest one being such a small thing as the name of the contact. While there actually was no such thing as AEGEE-Dresden in terms of AEGEE-Europe (by then, there was only a contact and AEGEEans in Dresden therefore should not use the scheme “AEGEE-cityname”), the registered association “AEGEE-Dresden e.V.” still existed on paper and the name was used. A situation which was quite confusing: “I think, I personally had to invest more time in discussing this specific topic, which is not covered by the CIA, with the Network Commission, Juridical Commission and the Comité Directeur than any other AEGEE-related topic in the last month”. In fact, during Agora Cagliari, a motion by the Comité Directeur and the Network Commission was proposed, in order to clarify the linkage that Contacts have with AEGEE-Europe.

Nevertheless, the process of becoming an official antenna is doing well right now. One aspect which helped a lot was the fact that both Ingo and Jorge were already experienced members who had a lot of contacts all over the Network. By now, the contact antenna has around eleven new and active members. And even some more people are helping them to organize the Buddy Program, a project which is quite extraordinary, especially taking into account how recently the contact antenna was re-founded and that there are not so many active members.

The idea behind the Buddy Program is easy. It is a program which brings together local and international students who come to Dresden to study at one of the Universities. Their two aims are to give the internationals a good and easy start in the city and to give the local students the chance to experience a more international flair “so they want to join AEGEE”, Ingo says smilingly. The idea of such a program came up quite instantly since Dresden was missing such a program when Jorge first came to the city. Later they found out that one of the very first International Buddy Programs in Germany was introduced in Dresden back in 2001 and that it had even won several prizes. Ingo explains the further process: “We were able to contact the “old” organizers of that program and even got a very nice and active new member that way”, meaning Nora, the current secretary of the contact antenna. Within the Buddy Program, many events are happening. The most successful idea was an event called “International Night” which took place only a few weeks ago. The concept resembles that of a European Night, only that is was even more international. More than 120 people attended. All in all, there are almost 400 international students taking part in the Buddy Program at the moment.

That so many people find out about AEGEE-Dresden is surely due to good advertisement. The AEGEE Contact Antenna advertises mainly on their own website and – very successfully – on Facebook, but also within the university on digital screens and on print media such as flyers. “We even got featured in several of the smaller newspapers”, says Ingo. Nevertheless, one of the biggest supporters and also advertisers is the University of Dresden. While normally the members of AEGEE approach the University and ask for help, it was different in their case: “They were approaching us with ideas of how to promote our association. I had never experienced it in this way, only the other way around”, says Ingo. For example, the University’s International Office sent the Buddy Program flyers to all the new international students together with the acceptance letters via postal service. Therefore, they actually reached 100% of the internationals, which was just “awesome”.

The Buddy Program works well, one can conclude. In terms of winning new members for their antenna, the internationals are not the main target audience though. Instead, the main target group are the local students, the local Buddies. “By organizing nice events, like all the stuff happening in the Buddy Program right now, we want to link them to AEGEE and the European idea. And – it works. The Buddy Program is a good magnet for getting new active members”, Ingo tells us. One can be sure that they will have no problems growing to a bigger local in no time.

Even though the Buddy Program is obviously a very big and successful project, it is not the only thing that the contact antenna has planned: Soon, a Regional Training Course (RTC) will take place in Dresden from 11th to 14th December. It will be a four day all-included training course for 25 local students and AEGEEans, and it will be the first international event for them.

AEGEE-Dresden seems more than motivated and obviously they manage to transform their motivation into actual success! And for all the support they got on their way they want to say thanks: “I want to thank all the people that made AEGEE-Dresden coming to life again and constantly support us, including the members of the old AEGEE-Dresden who we call “Dinos” and dedicated our mascot to, DresDino. My biggest wish for the future is that AEGEE stays alive here in Dresden.”

Written by Katja Sontag, AEGEE-Aachen