These past days, The AEGEEan has got to know better the local that was elected as Local of the Month of March – AEGEE-Leuven! They organised a brilliant exchange between European and Palestinian students in the framework of the EuroArab Project last February, which was the reason for their nomination. 

The antenna, located in the famous Belgian student city, was founded in 1991 and resurrected around the year 2006. In the words of Heleen Yu, current president of AEGEE-Leuven: “We have always been a small local due to the oversaturated market of student organisations in Leuven”. At this moment, the local has around 50 members, of which 12-15 are active.

The School of Social Entrepreneurship

The School of Social Entrepreneurship (SSE) was an exchange between ten members of AEGEE-Leuven and ten Palestinian students from the West Bank, that AEGEE-Leuven organised in cooperation with the Palestinian NGO Sharek Youth Forum in the framework of AEGEE’s EuroArab-project. As Valérie Boiten, the coordinator of the exchange, explains, the ten Palestinians came to Leuven for a week, where the participants attended lectures, training activities and workshops concerning the idea of a social business.

Some of these workshops were provided by AEGEE members Wessel Reijers (AEGEE-Enschede) and Mathieu Soete (AEGEE-Leuven), but other organisations like JUB International, RootAbility and SPIT [ed. a local social business] were invited too. The participants also spent one day in Brussels to visit the European External Action Service headquarters where they could learn more about the European Neighbourhood Policy and the external actions of the EU, especially the ones concerning the situation between Israel and the West Bank. They also attended a session on quality jobs at the European Youth Forum headoffice. However, AEGEE-Leuven also offered a very rich social programme: dancing to traditional music and tasting Palestinian typical food, an ice-skating evening and a ‘Belgian night’ are only some of the highlights.

But, how did the adventure of the School of Social Entrepreneurship begin? The idea came up for the first time in June last year, during a study visit for youth workers where Valérie met Mahmoud, representative of Sharek Youth Forum, and the idea of organizing an exchange together started to grow. A few months later, Valérie and Dima (the project manager of Sharek) started to develop the plans of organizing SSE more concretely, and the application for the Youth in Action programme was sent to the National Agency in Brussels, which approved the project.

They agree that the challenge was pretty big for such a small local: “It was challenging to combine the multiplicity of tasks, but I guess this is something everyone who has ever organized an AEGEE event will recognize”, Valérie says. “Just when you think you’ve taken care of everything, something new pops up! There are literally a thousand things to think about and the Youth in Action procedures can be very exhausting”. Yet, in the words of the organisers, the biggest challenge was to ensure that the Palestians could get to Belgium in the first place! “We all know the hardship they face, and how their abilities to travel freely, even within their own country, are extremely reduced. It was very difficult to get through the visa procedures, they almost didn’t make it on time. Only two days before the project would start, the visas were granted. A huge relief!”, Valérie concludes.

AEGEE-Leuven, a small but active local

Only a few weeks after the SSE concluded, AEGEE-Leuven was already planning their new event, a local Y Vote 2014 conference. They invited Professor Christoph Crombez, who is an expert on European economics and politics, and Saïd El Khadraoui, a Leuven born and raised MEP. Both gave a short talk on the importance of the past European Parliament elections and the value of the vote of the youth. As Tom Etienne, current Treasurer, explains: “This was particularly interesting, because one point of view was clearly from an academic side, whilst the other one obviously came from a politician”. The event managed to gather a group of international students who asked about all kinds of issues, such as transparency and democracy in the EU, the financial crisis, the environment, and of course the results of the upcoming elections, and it concluded with a very active debate among the guest speakers and the young people.

AEGEE-Leuven is ackowledged for having organised many successful European events in the past couple of years, ranging from Travel Summer Universities, to a Network Meeting, and a thematic event in cooperation with the Human Rights Working Group. According to Heleen, “good teamwork and knowing each others’ strengths is I think in our case our advantage when it comes to organising exchanges. Almost everything is organised by the board, with a limited amount of help of volunteers, which we are grateful for”. Valérie adds that one of their biggest achievements has been “our growing rate of members over the past two years. From a small group of people we’ve seen our membership base evolve quite quickly, though of course we’re still quite small – but charming! On the other hand it is also nice that people seem to find us whenever it’s about European affairs or European organisations. We’ve been contacted quite a few times this year for projects, research and press articles”.

In fact, Leuven is widely-known as one of the biggest and most vibrant student cities in Europe. More than 40,000 students come to live there each year, and around 7,000 are international students coming from over 140 countries. As Heleen says: “It seems rather easy to reach international students since we are in the ‘international students organizations’ category. We are invited by the university to join the info fair for new incoming international students every semester”. However, she adds that, when it comes to reaching the Belgian students “it is more difficult, since there are not a lot of students who are particularly interested in meeting international people, as most people already have their “usual” group of friends and stick to this. But we see a change now, we think that more and more Belgians are open to their international fellows”.

The local has no future plans yet: there will be a new board elected at the start of the academic year which will surely surprise with new events and activities. Meanwhile, we wish AEGEE-Leuven the best and congratulate them once more for such a big achievement!

Written by Anna Gumbau,  AEGEE-Barcelona

Would you like to find out the story behind the “révolution heureuse”? Do you know whose slogan is “Liberty, Order, Justice”? Or you have travelled the whole Europe at the age of twenty-something (which is actually not impossible if you are an AEGEEan), and you are extremely eager to discover something new? If your response to any of these questions is yes, keep reading.

At the moment when various forms of civil disobedience are in progress on our continent (no matter whether you consider them demonstrations, revolutions, or something else), it is so intriguing to see what it looks like when one of them successfully finishes. There were different socio-cultural reasons for which Tunisia was a special case of the Arab Spring. Full Internet access, closeness to Europe (not only geographically), a big percentage of high-educated, but unemployed young people are only one of them. Since every AEGEEan supports taking an action instead of only complaining on social networks, this is an awesome opportunity to meet young people who actually did so. Undoubtedly, we can learn from them as much as they can from us.

The event takes place from 11th until 18th of May, with a 140 euros fee, including: accommodation in a hostel, three meals per day, transportation inside Tunisia and entrance fees to all the places visited as the part of the programme.

The programme provides you with activities exploring both the modern and conservative sides of Tunisia, meetings with members of different Tunisian NGOs, discussions about the Tunisian revolution and the Arab Spring, visits to religious and historic sites, as well as diferent cultural activities.

If none of the above reasons have convinced you to apply yet, feel free to check Facebook pages of EuroArab Project of AEGEE- Europe, or simply of the event itself. Of course, unless the wonderful photos taken personally by our HR Responsible Mariem Ben Ltaifa do not manage to seduce you before that.

More information can be found in:

• EuroArab Project Facebook Group
• Facebook Page of the Event

Written by Lana Tomić, AEGEE-Zagreb

If you’ve heard of the Arab minority in Europe, Hungary might not be the country that first comes to mind, but there is a minority in Budapest. When the Euroarab project team approached AEGEE-Budapest about organising an event, the first thought was that it would be a good opportunity to organise open lectures for externals (potential members). While brainstorming on “something Arab” the members developed the concept of AEGEE-Budapest’s ‘Arab week’, which took place in the last week of November.

This ‘Arab Week’ started with a roundtable discussion on the Muslim community of Hungary. Around 30-35 participants came to listen to the discussion (about half of them were the members of AEGEE-Budapest). There were experts from the university and a leader of the Hungarian Islam Church.

The participants learned that Muslim minorities have been living in Hungary even before the Ottoman occupation. So Arab merchants and travellers had been visiting Hungary for centuries. Now, in the 21^st century the situation is very different from other -for example Western European- countries. If you ask Hungarians where they can meet ethnic Arab people, they will probably say in the hospitals as doctors, or they might know some engineers, dentists, traders and businessmen. This is because in the sixties and seventies of the 20th century, thousands of young Arabs came  to study in Hungary. Some went home after their studies, but some of them stayed – having built a family there, with a Hungarian wife/ husband and children.

Of course the Muslim community is not the same as the Arab community of Hungary. The experts explained that around two-thirds of Muslims in Hungary are ethnic Arabs or have Arabic origins. It was very interesting to hear about the different groups within and different realities of a largely unknown heterogenous community. The speakers agreed that it is possible to live according to the Islamic religious rules in Hungary, though they saw some difficulties. Most problems in the workplace, schools and other places could be solved easily, but the biggest problem is a lack of knowledge and ignorance of the ‘majority’.

Muslims have had to acknowledge that many things in their traditions and customs (even the ‘rules of praying’) depend on their cultural background. So here, in Europe the different groups have to communicate to learn from one another.

The participants listened carefully to the long discussion and also participated with some interesting questions. In the end everyone learned a lot about this heterogenous group of people that lives among us. But whether there is something like a European Islam is still hard to say. How different is this religion existing in minorities, where many historically connected cultural and traditional features are not present?

After the roundtable discussion there was an ‘Arabian night’, a house party with some Arab cookies made by members of AEGEE-Budapest. Not all the rules of the Quran were followed during the night, but some potential AEGEE members joined, and  together they played a quiz to test their knowledge of the Arabian countries.

Two days later there was a lecture on the current conflict in Syria which also included a discussion of the different groups within the Syrian society. This time there was an audience of around 45 people, and many students from different universities took part in this thematic event. The Professor explained how history affected this fragile society. Even though the Syrian civil war is often in the news, without understanding the thousand years old coexistence of Muslims and Christians, one can only have a false picture of the country.

The Arab week for AEGEE-Budapest was a huge success. With strong PR many people were reached, and during the event members of AEGEE and other students were able to learn a lot about Arab culture and the reality of this minority group.

Written by: Roland Papp (AEGEE-Budapest)