The Events Committee now has a new name: Quality Assurance Committee (Q.A.C.). This fits better with its role of improving the quality of the events that are organised by AEGEE locals. They also have a new team, the AEGEEan interviewed them on the recent changes.

AEGEEan: So, you are a new team. What are the roles of the members of the team?

Q.A.C.: Yes, a new team with new ideas and a new approach to the work! The team now consists of a speaker: Antonis Triantafyllakis (AEGEE-Heraklio); plus five Quality Assurance Responsibles: Patrick Scholz (AEGEE-Aachen); Hilde Lahaije (AEGEE-Utrecht); Margarita Simonova (AEGEE-Moskva); Réka Salamon (AEGEE-Aachen); and Andrew Bartolo (AEGEE-Valetta).

The Quality Assurance Responsibles have already split the AEGEE locals among themselves, in order to have a better system to keep track of events and to improve communication with locals. We are planning to create Facebook groups and have one representative from each local for bidirectional communication between locals and the Q.A.C. Our priority for now is to reach all locals and explain why we should focus more on “quality events” and how cooperating with us would have great benefits for them.

What are the reasons behind renaming the (former) Events Committee?

AEGEE means a lot of things for all our members, but for many it is a learning platform for gaining competences we cannot get elsewhere. The Events Committee’s role in this was not very clear to the Network. Non-formal education is an important aspect of our work as an organisation, but that has to meet certain standards. With renaming the Committee, we set a clear aim: we want to raise the quality of events  by putting more emphasis on educational content.

A better organised event with the right logistics and content will produce happier participants. Plus it will help keep a clear overview of AEGEE’s impact on its members and help us having a further recognition of non-formal educational tools, which is one of AEGEE’s greatest strengths.

How exactly are you planning to introduce this new system to the Network? Do you think the locals will be more interested in cooperating with the Committee this time?

We want to establish a constant communication with the locals and the Network Commission is already helping us with this. We are not here to annoy everyone with our forms; but more helping hands will result in making the organisation of events easier. The locals can contact us at any time with their proposed event and we are more than happy to:

1. Aid cooperation with another European Level body (especially in case of thematic events).

2. Help with the promotion of the event (we are thinking about an Events Newsletter).

3. Our guidelines and forms can make planning easier – so locals don’t have to start everything from scratch.

Will locals have to submit a forms and get “quality checked”? And how complicated is this new system going to be?

No more complicated than using Intranet… The locals have to submit the Assessment Form (which will become available on the Members Portal later). Once their event is approved, they can upload it on Intranet and the promotion can begin on EVENT-L  and other platforms. Once the event is over, locals should fill out an Evaluation Form to give us proper feedback on the outcomes which they can also use for an internal evaluation of the event.

Anything else you would like to share with the AEGEEan?

Yes, ‘Quality Indicators’ is just the fancy new term for ‘I can help you with that’. Check out the presentation of the brand new Committee and don’t hesitate to write to us any time.

Written by: Lia Tuska (AEGEE-Kastoria & AEGEE-Sofia)

An important re-establishment of the currently-operating solid local dates back to 2009 but our antenna was originally founded in 1991 with the help of Dutch students.

AEGEE-Debrecen has around 40 members but the core team of the most active ones is smaller. What we think is special about us is that we aspire to turn our relative shortcoming of having a small team into advantages. Having a small group leaves us with a clear understanding of each other’s competences. Allocating responsibilities and tasks accordingly makes us able to turn each other into real assets for the antenna and for each other.

Another essential thing is the fun element. Although we are creative and challenge-takers, we do not forget about monitoring ourselves and each other from an outsider’s point of view and we have a great sense of criticism. We do not take ourselves too seriously and prefer not to forget about enjoying participation.

Last summer you took up the challenge of organising the European School & Summer University. 

Indeed. Imagine the first summer ever in AEGEE history when AEGEE Academy encouraged locals to organize a balanced mixture of a European School and a Summer University by merging them into one Summer Event. It was super-challenging for the organizers, trainers as well as for the participants. Yet, “European School: 4 Elements 4 You!” has been an amazingly unique experience for all of us. We rarely visit the same café the first ESSU meetings took place in, but when we do the memories still instantly put us back into that same hyper-enthusiastic mood.

This year we are organising a Travelling Summer University together with AEGEE-Sibiu. “The HungaRomanian Adventure” will be an excellent opportunity for our participants to discover the beauties of two countries: Hungary and Romania. Apart from letting participants discover true Central-Eastern-European hospitality, we will focus on introducing Romanian and Hungarian culture, more specifically by sightseeing and other outdoor activities, by trying traditional cuisine and providing insights into our languages and history. Both Northern-Eastern-Hungary and Transylvania are wonderful and we are all very excited to welcome an exceptionally diverse group of participants here.

Thus, when the Comité Directeur and the ITC issued an open call to find a hosting antenna to organize an Information Technology European School, it came naturally to apply. After our multicultural New Year’s Eve there was time to prepare. The low number of participants also further multiplied the good, cozy team spirit and enthusiasm. We believe that all the opportunities and benefits of working in the field of IT in AEGEE have been clearly presented by our guest trainers, Pavel Zborník and Maurits Korse and we hope that AEGEE-Debrecen has contributed to inspiring potential ITC members. We enjoyed the event and we would gladly do it all over again!

As a focus area in the Strategic Plan of AEGEE-Europe for the period of 2011-2014, Inclusion of Minorities aims at confronting young people with the reality of minority groups by involving them in direct personal encounters in order to create mutual understanding.

Knowing general local realities as well as witnessing the influence of recent years’ global economic and moral crisis in Hungary, we think that such projects are relevant and should be promoted. With the rise of populism and dogmatic thinking, certain minority groups are often falsely blamed for the common bad. Capitalizing on citizens’ lack of knowledge and an increasing xenophobia is pretty frequent nowadays. We hope that we will be able to organize Living Libraries in Debrecen regularly in the future to promote understanding and respect for diversity.

We consciously try our best in keeping our members updated about all the relevant information on the many opportunities AEGEE offers. Weekly local meetings, info evenings at the university, newcomers’ camps, university-based or city-wide cultural and career fairs and summer festivals – these are the regular events at which we promote our local and international activities face-to-face internally and to the external world too. The fact that we have (former) board members currently active on the European Level (Réka Salamon in Public Relations Committee, Liliána Tóth in Events Committee, Diána Leskó in The Euro-Arab Project and Nóra Abdel-Salam in The AEGEEan) makes things a bit more easy when it comes to promotion.

Although the, locally considerable, geographical distances make it quite challenging to have actual joint projects to work on and realize them together, we follow each others’ activities and help each other if we can. As it is one of the largest locals in the entire Network, we regularly have guest trainers from AEGEE-Budapest at our thematic events and at our Local Training Courses for years now. AEGEE-Debrecen members also frequently attend their events. Sharing best practices and striving for a closer national cooperation have also been among the aims of a recent Regional Training Course of Hungarian antennae organized by AEGEE-Piliscsaba in April.

Written by Patricia Anthony, AEGEE-København

Some of you never might never have heard about the Events Committee, and those who have might have no knowledge about what it is and why it is necessary. If you are interested, then continue reading. 

The EvC (Events Committee) is not a new born committee – it was founded in June of 2011 with the aim to improve the quality of the European and AEGEE events and to support the locals in organising them. The new EvCom team was elected in october of 2012 and the four enthusiastic board members are ready to do their best to accomplish their mission.

How does the EvC work?

If an Antenna has decided to organise a European or an AEGEE event, except a Statutory Event, a Summer University or a Network Meeting, it has to contact the EvC first. And then the process goes as follows:

1. Make a plan with your local
2. Fill in the application form and send it to the EvC
3. Your application is evaluated by the EvC
4. While you are waiting for the reply of the EvC, you create an event on Intranet
5. You are informed by the EvC if your event is approved or not
6. If everything is fine we approve the event also on the Intranet and you can start the promotion.
7. If something is wrong or missing, we contact you and help to solve the problem. 

Filling in a form is not a big deal, but usually it used to be a problem to the locals to choose a Focus Area correctly. However this is the most important part of the application since it is the aim of the EvC to encourage the locals to organise events with thematical content. Organisers have to choose from the fields of Youth Participation, Bridging Europe and Inclusion of Minorities. Unfortunately most of the members in the Network do not really know what these topics are, but no worries; you can find the criteria in the Strategic Plan and the Action Agenda.

Future plans and present actions 

The EvC has a lot of ideas for the future. Soon the EvC homepage will be ready, where you can reach the application form easily, you can find the the descriptions of the Focus Areas there as well as all the other important information about the EvC .

There are plans to adjust the system of EVENT-L, but probably the biggest project will be the classification of the events by taking the guidelines of organising them more seriously.

Photo competition

Right now the EvC is working on making a collection of the pictures of last year’s events, for which a photo conest is hereby announced. Everyone is asked to send in photos of AEGEE-events of 2012, hoping to see which was the greatest one and for participants to share their memories with the rest of the network. The pictures will be uploaded on the Facebook page of the Events Committee so everyone can vote to their favourite ones. The winner gets the title „The Best Photo of 2012” and the chance to write a nice summary in The AEGEEan about his/her experience and memories of the event where the winner photo was taken. You can read about the details in the mailing lists or you can contact the EvC at  events@aegee.org

Even though the Events Committee is not “new born”, it is still in its infancy and it is believed that with persistence and hard work the EvC can make great changes and become an essential part of AEGEE.

Written by Liliána Tóth,  Speaker of the Events Committee