MY-WAY is a project that was launched in January 2015 with the aim to enhance and improve the collaboration and efforts of web entrepreneurship initiatives. We wanted to know more about the project and what is exactly happening, so we asked Pablo Hernández, External Relations Director of AEGEE-Europe, and Ioana Duca, Project Officer of the MY-WAY project, some questions.

The AEGEEan: Can you tell us a little bit about the project? 
Ioana: The MY-WAY project is a two year project, funded by Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. The project started in January 2015 and its aim is to improve the collaboration and efforts of web entrepreneurship initiatives (startup hubs, accelerator networks, etc.), internet and business experts (accelerators, mentors, etc.), educational actors (business teachers and trainers) and young adults as the final beneficiaries (through student networks, student entrepreneurship initiatives, etc.). I’m the Project Officer of MY-WAY project and responsible for two stakeholders meetings. The first one took place on the 12th of November and the second one will be in the last week of January (the date is still under discussion). My current position gives me all the logistical responsibilities for the events and some content responsibilities.

As you already mentioned, the first stakeholders meeting took place on the 12th of November. How did it go?
Ioana: Yes, we had our first stakeholders meeting on the 12th of November in the European Parliament, hosted by MEP Brando Benifei, Committee on Employment and Social Affairs. The aim of this event was to bring together successful web entrepreneurs, business teachers, trainers, members of student networks, student enterprise centers, and actors managing initiatives and programs on web entrepreneurship and to encourage active discussions between participants on effective ways of providing support while also establishing further cooperations. We had 25 participants in person and 25 participants online, plus even more people following the event online. At some point we had around 154 people watching the streaming.
Pablo: Everything went very well. The event gathered people from very different backgrounds and different roles in the web-entrepreneurship world so they could exchange experiences and good practices. The European Parliament is the perfect place to host this kind of activities, giving us the space, the visibility and the opportunity to address a member of the European Parliament. We also had the opportunity to have a keynote speech by Mr. Gonçalo Lobo Xabier and the intervention of many other relevant people trying to improve the entrepreneurship ecosystem.

MY-WAY is not an AEGEE project, but AEGEE is a partner in it. How does your experience in AEGEE helps you work for this project?
Pablo: The role of AEGEE within the project is to bring the youth and student perspective into the project. We are the main target group and possible beneficiaries of the outcomes of the project so my experience in AEGEE helps me giving the input from the students point of view at the different stages of the project. There are other tasks in which we also have to have a guiding role and for those, like the organisation of the stakeholders meetings, my previous experience in AEGEE is crucial, because I can put into practice what I did by organising some activities in the past.
Ioana: I think my experience in AEGEE helped me a lot. The experience that I gained in these five years and a half is very hard to be described in words, but I can say that it made me the person that I am today. All the events that I organised (around six Summer Universities, plus other local events), all the experience being in the board of my local (Secretary, President and SU Coordinator), plus all the responsabilities in European Bodies (as CD assistant twice and Comité Directeur) gave me a lot of knowledge. They even changed me, and moreover all these gave me the chance to experience everything that I know and learned and even more, to be challenged and to learn more, to discover more. Being a volunteer is definitely not a waste of time and energy. Being an active AEGEE member is never boring and for nothing, it is for you and the person that you want to become, it is for a life full of challenges and experiences.

Can members from AEGEE locals be part and get actively involved in the project?
Pablo: There are some ways to actively get involved. Some months ago we had to research the actual state of web-entrepreneurship and we launched a survey across the network. From now on there will be some events organized by the partners of the consortium for young people and in some cases, we can reserve a place to AEGEE members. But now the main involvement that we as AEGEEans can have is to create a platform to debate and organize activities related to web entrepreneurship following up on the results of the project. The Comité Directeur is willing to help the members in this process and support all this kind of initiatives.

What are your plans in the near future regarding the project?
Pablo Hernandez: My plans regarding the MY-WAY project are mainly to organise the second stakeholders meeting, which will consume a lot of our time. There are other activities that involve us in the project too, like the partners meeting, attending some conferences to bring the youth perspective into play, writing reports of our tasks and disseminating the results of the project, which will finish by the end of 2016.

How do you see the project in five years?
Ioana: Hopefully there will be a continuity, maybe a second phase of the project if the consortium decides to apply with another project to give continuity to what we already worked on. But even if this will not happen, I think the results will give the chance to still be able to work on the topic and will create some bridges and long term collaborations between stakeholders.

You can follow the project on Facebook or the website.

Written by Raluca Radu, AEGEE-Cluj-Napoca

What do AEGEE members understand when talking about sustainability? Where did they learn about this? And how would they like AEGEE to be involved with this topic? Finding out the answers to these questions was the aim of the survey on sustainability which was completed by almost 120 people from over 60 locals all around the network. Both multiple choice and qualitative answers were analysed and quantified, and will serve as input for AEGEE’s position paper on sustainability.

Sustainability is…

… a buzzword/often misunderstood/a way of thinking/ a clear path for action/ all of the above. One thing is clear: ask 120 people about their understanding of sustainability and you will get 120 different answers. This can however only enrich the debate, as a concept as complex as sustainability can only be understood and operationalised by looking at it from multiple angles at the same time. So — at risk of generalisation — what do AEGEE members think of sustainability?

Sustainability is the way of living, creating public policy and economic growth that takes into account environmental issues and will help to preserve natural resources for future generations.”

This explanation by a respondent from AEGEE-Poznań perhaps succeeds the best at capturing the wide range of ideas and definitions collected through the survey. For when analysed the answers fell broadly into a number of categories, of which the most important keywords are (in order of frequency): Future, Resources, Green, 3 elements, and Balance.

One in two respondents focus on long-term thinking and planning, preserving our planet and quality of life for future generations. This requires a different approach at resource usage and the introduction of closed-loop production and consumption systems. While many respondents mentioned the classical 3 components of sustainability — economy, society, and environment — and the balance between them, over 20% however, still see sustainability in a predominantly green light.

Education for sustainability

So even though 91% of respondents have at least some notions of sustainability, there is still some room for improvement. How much do AEGEE members — and youth in general — know about sustainability, and how much of this did they learn at school? It is true that the basics are being discussed in primary and secondary school — think water cycle and geography field trips —, but this “decreases as you pass to the next level of education, as the education becomes more specific and ‘serious’”, says a member of AEGEE-Valladolid.

Almost three in four respondents feel there is not enough attention for sustainability within formal education and 48% even estimate that sustainability-wise their time at school was a waste of time, with another third only learning a little about it.

On the other hand less than 25% believe they don’t know enough about the topic to do anything themselves. So where do people get their knowledge from then? This is where non-formal education (NFE) comes in, says Bogdan from AEGEE-Bucureşti: “I only found out about this from my AEGEE local.”

For one in three respondents, NFE is also a more suitable method for teaching sustainability than formal education. “Non-formal education is better in showing people ways to live more sustainable instead of simply telling them what to do”, says Wieke of AEGEE-Leuven, and Nolwen (AEGEE-Toulouse) continues: “Sustainability is about reforming our societies deeply and fundamentally, it therefore requires non-formal education, out of books, it requires to learn by doing, by discussing.”

Time for action

While playing a big role in teaching young people about sustainability, NGOs (28%) score significantly lower than e.g. national government (33%) when respondents are being asked to rank 6 stakeholders in order of importance to take initiative in making life more sustainable (weighted average 30%). It is therefore crucial to cooperate with all stakeholders in pursuing sustainability, including national and local government, business, youth and other NGOs, citizens’ initiatives, and individuals.

What role do respondents then see for organisations such as AEGEE?

Like many things, sustainability starts at home. For Guillermo Garcia Tabares of AEGEE-Barcelona, we should “first of all establish some obligatory criteria for all events. Secondly, create best practices which are easy to follow.” Only then, he says, should we start working on bigger projects. Again analysing the answers, we can see that respondents suggest a number of possible approaches.

More than one in five support Guillermo’s proposal for internal sustainability standards, while slightly more people would like to see Environmental Working Group and others to provide assistance to members and organisers to become more sustainable. Most respondents favour the raising of awareness and spreading of knowledge through workshops, but as this was not a multiple choice question, this serves mostly as a first step towards a more active engagement. Finally, remarkable are also the 15% who suggest raising our voice externally, by lobbying institutions for more sustainability or partnering with other youth organisations.

And now?

Credits to Jjpacres on Flickr

After defining the topic and conducting a survey to gather the first input, the next step is to launch an online consultation on the topic of sustainability — more in particular education for sustainability. This process will be informed by a lay of the land in Europe, and will define the basis for future lobbying for more attention for sustainability in both formal and non-formal education.

On sustainable entrepreneurship, the second subtopic proposed at Agora Budapest, not sufficient knowledge and outspoken opinions seem to be available within AEGEE at the moment. While I will continue to research the topic and share useful opportunities, it might be too soon for AEGEE to take a position on this. Rather, more time and efforts should first be invested in raising people’s understanding of, and experience with entrepreneurship as such, e.g. through successful projects such as the European School on Entrepreneurship or collaborations with Startup Pirates and other specialised initiatives.

Written by Mathieu Soete, Policy Officer on Sustainability

Sustainable development… Green growth… Sustainability… The air is packed with sustainable buzzwords and it is hard to open a newspaper these days without finding an article on some sustainability topic. Regardless of the many empty uses ofthe word, it cannot be denied that sustainability is thé challenge of our generation, as was confirmed by over 40% of respondents in the recent AEGEE Survey on sustainability.

Photo by Mathieu Soete

Realising this importance, AEGEE chose Sustainability as one of its policy fields for the term 2012/2013. Within this complex field, focus is put on the subtopics of Education for sustainability and Sustainable entrepreneurship, while also paying attention to making AEGEE more sustainable in its day-to-day activities and projects.

Education for sustainability

An endless sequence of campaigns has had some success in raising people’s awareness about the major global and local sustainability issues. People around the world are familiar with the 2°C rise in global temperature related to climate change, and many know that a lot of our food is being wasted on the way from farm to fork. Any system of Education for sustainability (ESD) with a chance of success, however, should be developed through participation of all stakeholders, including students. This subtopic therefore aims at finding out the perceptions and demands of AEGEEans towards ESD, and its place in their education.Sustainable entrepreneurship

“Sustainable entrepreneurship” generates just over 100 million hits when googled, but what is it exactly? If used without any significant changes to the company policy, it becomes “greenwashing”, not only fooling customers in their search for more sustainable products, but also spreading doubt about the credibility of genuinely sustainable companies.

Map of survey responses

Put simply, a sustainable entrepreneur is an entrepreneur with the explicit objective of improving a social or environmental situation. 42% of respondents agreed that, eventually, all companies will have to become sustainable, so we better get started today. It takes more than just a good idea to build a company though,  and with only 12% reporting any experience with entrepreneurship, there is still much to learn.

This is where both subtopics intersect, providing skills and knowledge training to future entrepreneurs, and surrounding fresh start-ups with the right environment for growth and development. This subtopic looks into existing best practices on education and support of young entrepreneurs around Europe, and discusses possible ways of improvement.

My aim as Policy Officer is to bring the opinion of AEGEE to the policy-makers, while sharing opportunities for learning and action. But for this I need your input of course. So contact me at mathieu.soete@aegee.org to share your ideas and questions, or join the mailing list Sustainability-L to start discussing!

Written by: Mathieu Soete, Policy Officer on Sustainability, for the NetCom Times.