It’s the closing plenary of Spring Agora Enschede 2017 and the next European Planning Meeting hosting local has been announced: it is AEGEE-Yerevan! We reached out to them and spoke to Armenak Minasyants from the Armenian local to ask them more about their reaction to the good news and some sneak peeks. 

The AEGEEan: Why did you apply to host European Planning Meeting 2018?

Armenak: There are many reasons behind the motivation of our local to apply for hosting the European Planning Meeting 2018. We have a strong belief towards our own institutional and administrative resources to host such a big event in our city. In AEGEE-Yerevan we are people who believe that the objective of life is to hit and not get hit. We are looking to expand our portfolio while we are on top and while we are extremely motivated. In the last seven years, we have set the model for showing to thousands of young people in Armenia how they should be responsible citizens and youth workers in and out of AEGEE. Now, it is high time also to deliver this on the European level!

Another amazing reason and motivation for applying is that practically EPM Yerevan 2018 will become the biggest youth European event ever organised in Armenia and AEGEE, in our perception, shall be the organisation making the history in different corners of Europe! We welcome the approach of the CDs in recent years to grant the locals in non-EU countries an opportunity to host statutory events. Our Network is amazingly diverse and it is great to have these synergies of hosting for instance Agora in Western Europe and afterwards coming to the very South-East of Europe and experiencing ideally a different reality during EPM. This will surely contribute to internal transformations within AEGEE and will boost our sense of being European not just as a matter of geography, as being European is first and foremost caring about the same universal system of values. Hence, we are motivated to have the EPM and allow everyone to discover one of the oldest cradles of European culture.

How did you react when you first heard the news that you were accepted?

Ohhhhh my God! OMG OMG OMG! I mean, this is literally the biggest moment in my life! When it was announced it literally took almost a day from me to calm down, as I have been calling everyone to inform about the news! On the next day, we hosted a board meeting and pumped a bottle of the best local champagne, thus marking the start of our preparations! Yes, we have started it already! The emotions are too hard to describe, this is something you need to go through.

How would you describe AEGEE-Yerevan?

We are young, talented, passionate and very professional local! Our ultimate goal is to always break records and the EPM 2018 is the next milestone for us! Our local now has successfully undergone the period of reconstruction and revival, the generational change has been finalised, the institutional memory of the organisation is better than ever, and the organisational matters are handled in the most professional manner with six board members constantly working. We have extremely experienced board members, who are flavoured with very young newcomers’ enthusiasts striving for experience.

Who will be in the core team of EPM Yerevan?

Let me first of all pass words of thankfulness to Ani, Kalipso, Anna, Nirvana, Izabella, Armine, Davit, Anush, Vika, Suren, Tereza and everyone who has helped us to make this application happen!

The core team of EPM Yerevan has eight members and is indeed amazingly strong! We have decided to bring out the best we have in the wardrobe. We will have former Network Commissioner Tereza “China” as one of the logistics officers working on the preparatory, we will have Ani Khachatryan – our long running and very experienced Secretary General, and surely another 40 local organisers and helpers coming up to help on any matter.

Furthermore, EPM Yerevan will be also special as all the external promotion, PR materials, merchandise will be made by professionals, as we will be working with professional PR and design agencies such as Ktor Designs and Deem Communications. This will help us having qualitatively new branding for such a big and important event.

Last but not the least, I have decided to be the head of the core team and I want to dedicate myself fully to the biggest project of my life, which the EPM is! Probably this will be the best way to end my long European AEGEE journey and retire from the association right at the EPM stage surrounded by my friends, AEGEEans and the organisation, which has given to me so much in past eight years.

Does AEGEE-Yerevan have any past experience in organising an event similar to the EPM?

Every year in Autumn we host a thematic EU-funded conference – Armenia Model EU Conference, which brings to Armenia up to 150 young people, youth workers and civic activists from all over Europe. This four-days project consists not only of a typical simulation conference style activity, but also of almost two days full of encounters, thematic panel discussions and open space discussions with leading European and local experts, mainly focusing on European political agenda matters.

It is worth to mention that in February 2017 we solely organised and hosted a thematic conference attended by Mr. Christian Danielsson, who is the Director General for Enlargement at the European Commission (DG NEAR). This has been a tremendous experience for us: just imagine we hosted a thematic event for 250 students with the attendance of a top EU official.

So, we are looking forward to comprehend our resources, experience and build up on our success stories for making the upcoming EPM really groundbreaking.

What do you have in mind for the facilities and the programme?

Even though it is a bit early now to discuss the facilities, it has been agreed preliminarily that the event will take place at the auspices of one of the best universities in Yerevan, which has the highest quality of technical equipment and facilities, which will be surely available to any EPM participant. We want participants not to face any technical problem during their activities. More notably, we want to suggest participants the most comfortable ever conditions of stay during an AEGEE statutory event. I really do not want to fold all our cards now, let’s keep it still as a surprise, but we will try to set up ideally a new benchmark in project quality and fundraising in AEGEE.

The programme will be amazingly packed, and not only because of the sessions, as we want every participant to feel the magic and spirit of our city, which will be marking its 2800th birthday in 2018!

Hence, everyone will have a chance to climb over the heights of the Cascade Stairs of Yerevan and admire the city panorama view, we will have an AEGEE flashmob on the longest pedestrian avenue, we will taste the best of our local wines and just enjoy the hospitality of any ordinary Yerevan resident, suggesting participants classical Armenian coffee and pastries.  

What will be your biggest challenges in hosting the EPM?

We treat every challenge as a new opportunity to develop our skills and grow stronger as an organization. Hence there are no challenges for us to host the EPM – it is all about opportunities – ain’t no boundaries, ain’t no limits. However, focusing more on the technical ground, I think the biggest challenge will be in supporting every participant with the travelling matters. Basically, we are going to help as much as possible in any transportation related matter. They are four ways for travelling to Yerevan (counting also Tbilisi and Kutaisi) and we are going to work at maximum to help each participant to reach Yerevan in the most cost effective and budgetary way.

What makes Yerevan attractive to visit?

 Yerevan is all about people! The hospitality and friendly attitude are probably the most common features of any Armenian and you can feel that hospitality on every step in Yerevan! Yerevan is rocking Europe since 786 BC! For millennia Yerevan has been at the crossroads of cultural trends, intellectual thought, groundbreaking research, and incredible inventions. Now it is bursting with a rocking nightlife and a buzzing restaurant scene. The city center is full of great wine houses and our city is owning the title of one of the world’s top 10 safest cities. Yerevan is an incredibly walkable city. As one of the safest cities in Europe, you will never find yourself in trouble, no matter how shabby the neighborhood appearance may be and how much drunk you might be. Around 82% of Yerevan residents feel quite safe walking home alone at night. So yes, life in Yerevan goes on in a safe, tiny, and sunny spot. The day of Yerevan residents starts with the bright sun greeting them in the morning, as we have sunny weather almost 300 days per year! The smell of “Armenian” coffee is spreading everywhere since the morning, and everyone from schoolchildren to officials doing their everyday work feel safe about their lives. Truly, if you are top AEGEE talent wanting to change the world, our organisation and enjoy yourself while doing it all, there is no better place to come and join than EPM Yerevan 2018!

Written by Federica Soro, AEGEE-Cagliari and Maria Zwartkruis, AEGEE-Utrecht

It’s the closing plenary of Spring Agora Enschede 2017 and the next Spring Agora hosting local has been announced: it is AEGEE-Kraków! We reached out to them and spoke to Magdalena Barwinek, current president of the Polish local, to ask them more about their reaction to the good news and some sneak peeks. 

The AEGEEan: Why did you apply to host Spring Agora 2018?

Autumn Network Meeting 2015 in Kraków

Magdalena: Our local has lately become more and more interested in the topic of European citizenship, so that we have opened up to the international events of AEGEE. Since the moment when 40 members of AEGEE-Kraków attended the Spring Agora Bergamo 2016 (what was the biggest delegation in the history), the idea of organising Agora in Kraków started to go around in the heads of the most experienced members. The topic of hosting the biggest AEGEE event has been present in our local since I remember, but nobody had been brave enough to discuss this issue in detail and to research our logistical potential. Finally, the departing 2016/2017 board made the decision of Open space on the topic of hosting the Agora. Within few hours of discussion, we took into consideration all the pros and cons and the result was surprising. All the 37 members that gathered voted ‘for’, nobody hold off, nobody was against. This result confirmed the Board’s belief, that hosting Agora was a secret dream of all our members.

How did you react when you first heard the news that you were accepted?

With the members who had the input into writing the application form, we have the conversation on Facebook. I remember how excited we were the day before the announcement. “The day” someone woke me up half an hour before the news was supposed to come with the information that the e-mail from CD had been already sent to me. I logged in right away, but there was nothing new, so I started to refresh the page every few seconds, whereas the other people were waiting impatiently on the Facebook conversation. As I finally received the messaged, I shared it immediately with the possible core team and the reactions were more than adorable. People started to shout at their lectures, at work, walking on the street… The witnesses of these reactions could have possibly thought that we are crazy, but this is the quintessence of how badly we wanted to organise Agora!

How would you describe AEGEE-Krakow?

40 AEGEE-Kraków members at Spring Agora Bergamo 2016

AEGEE-Kraków specialises in non-formal education. We annually organise around five local projects related to developing soft and hard skills. One of the most recognisable projects is Free Language Conversations – each semester we give students the opportunity to learn a foreign language on a chosen level, free of charge. The tutors are either philology students, foreigners or any other people who speak a certain language fluently, willing to share their knowledge and gain experience at the same time. Twice a year we organise LTCs, that provide our potential new members with the knowledge about project management. Then, they get the chance to broaden their knowledge at our Management Training Course, the second level of LTC. Mentioning the other projects would take too much space, so anybody who is interested in our local activities – I recommend following our fanpage on Facebook. What I want to add about AEGEE-Kraków is that we are always trying to find a balance between hard work on the projects and the social factor of being AEGEEans. Therefore we often organise trips together to integrate or members, we keep on searching for common activities and we are very open to all kinds of exchanges with other locals. What I really love in our antenna is the Facebook group called ‘SNAP’, which aim is to post your ideas for funny and odd activities. The other members have to make up a quick decision if they want to be your companion. For instance, If I’d had an idea to hitchhike towards Berlin after our General Meeting, I am pretty sure I wouldn’t have to wait more than a few minutes to find several people backing up this idea.

Who will be in the core team of Spring Agora Krakow?

AEGEE-Kraków loves hitchhiking! This time 21 members used this way of transportation to reach Triest in Italy.

As I mentioned before, there is already a group of people who were involved into the preparation of our application form and possibly they will be the members of the core team as well. If it comes to the main coordinator, as the board of AEGEE-Kraków we decided that all our members should have a real influence on this choice. So we announced an open call for this position and the coordinator will be chosen by the Plenary Assembly a few days after Agora. Having regard to the high rank of this event, we came to the common conclusion that this is the most legitimate way to select the leader. Who exactly will take the key positons in the core team is up to the future coordinator – the board will not interfere with her/his decisions. Nevertheless, we have been observing the predispositions of our members, both the experienced and the new, ambitious ones, so that we will be always ready to suggest the candidacies if the coordinator wishes to.

Does AEGEE-Kraków have any past experience in organising an event similar to the Agora?

AEGEE-Kraków has never organised an event as big as Agora, but we succeeded in preparing smaller, international events. In November 2015 we hosted 150 participants of Autumn Network Meeting – Awaken The Dragon. In April 2016 we were responsible for the logistics of 2^nd Youth 2 Youth Summit, the international conference for 100 participants related to the topics of corruption, lack of transparency and accountability and their implications on our lives. We also organised smaller events, as the AEGEE Eastern Partnership Youth Convention in 2015 and Y Vote Convention in 2014.

What do you have in mind for the facilities and the programme?

Current President, Magdalena Barwinek and ex-President, initiator of Spring Agora Kraków, Karolina Lapczyk.

Our aim is to find a place for assemblies at walking distance from the gym, very close to the city centre. We would like to use the public or private transportation as little as possible to let the participants explore the city – walking is the best way to discover the charme of the old streets in Krakow. As I attended few international events of AEGEE, I realized that there are few factors (beyond the substantive value) according to which the participants evaluate the event in general. They expect to eat well, to take a warm shower without standing in a long line and to have a steady access to the sockets and WiFi. The organisers have to bear in mind that if they do not provide the participants with those basics conveniences, even when the content is fine, people will not be fully satisfied. So we will do our best to find the proper facilities that suit these requirements.

What will be your biggest challenges in hosting the Agora?

The biggest challenge will not be organising Agora itself, but planning the activity of our whole local for the period of preparation to this big-scale event. The key to make AEGEE-Kraków still exist after Agora is to preserve the smaller, local projects and let them function within the whole “Agora preparation” period. The challenge therefore will be to divide the workforces wisely between the big, time-consuming project and the smaller, local ones. Thus, we keep in mind that an intensified recruitment process needs to be implemented in order to increase the number of our active members.

What makes Kraków attractive to visit?

Mariacki Church.

Around 20% of the people living in Cracow are students, what makes the city lively 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The historical city centre comes from the XIII century and was successfully developed within the following centuries, so that we can see a variety of architectural examples in one place. One of the most significant ones are Mariacki Church – gothic basilique in the north-eastern corner of the Main Square, Sukiennice – the Cloth Hall in the heart of the square that replaced the wooden market stalls in XIV century and the Wawel Castle, a residence of Polish kings by the Vistula river. Those examples are the absolute must-see, but there are lot more wonderful places to explore. For this reason we recommend to commit to at least one extra day beyond the official timeframe of Agora to explore the city. With a clear conscience we can assure you that in Krakow you can find everything you would expect from the hosting city of Agora – beautiful architecture, friendly people and exciting nightlife without spending a fortune! Moreover, our city is easily accessible from lots of European cities, so there is nothing more to add apart inviting you all to Spring Agora Kraków 2018! You can all feel more than welcome!

Written by Federica Soro, AEGEE-Cagliari and Maria Zwartkruis, AEGEE-Utrecht

Just like we did for the past Agorae, for Spring Agora Enschede, once again we would like to provide you with a short and easy summary of the proposals submitted for the Agora. In this third, and last round, we will be explaining you four proposals: “Including Planning Meeting in the Events, Projects and Activities”, “Changing the selection process of the hosting locals of the Agora”, “Fostering pre-Agora discussion by requiring online statements of support for proposals” and “Restriction of Reimbursement Criteria of Comité Directeur”.

Including Planning Meeting in the Events, Projects and Activities

The Planning Meeting is the event where the Strategic Plan, i.e. the guidelines for the work of the association in the following three years, is drafted. At the moment, there is no mention of this event in the CIA. Proposed by Lia Touska, on behalf of the Comité Directeur, this proposal wants to include the Planning Meeting in the CIA, defining the timing of the meeting and the procedures needed before and during the meeting. Specifically, the Planning Meeting will take place at least six weeks before the Agora in which the new Strategic Plan will be approved; the CD will be responsible for the agenda, which will be communicated to the Network at least two weeks prior the event, and the selection of the Planning Team; and the Open Call for the hosting local will be announced one year prior the event together with the Open Call for Autumn Agora.

You can read the full proposal here.

Changing the selection process of the hosting locals of the Agora

This proposal by Tekla Hajdu, Réka Salamon and Katarzyna Sokolowska on befalf of Comité Directeur, aims at increasing the transparency regarding the selection process of the Agora, so the AEGEE Network is informed about the application, has the chance to review it and can have a say in the process. If approved, it will be the Agora who will decide on the hosting local by secret ballot. This will also allow AEGEE-Europe to have a more proactive role in supporting the hosting local with possible funding opportunities and external cooperations. The CD will need to approve applications one month prior the presentation to Agora; the hosting local will be selected one year prior the event and will be required to present a progress report at the following Agora.

You can read the full proposal here.

Fostering pre-Agora discussion by requiring online statements of support for proposals

Proposed by Evelien Kroon, Jochem Postmes and Steyn ten Kate on behalf of AEGEE-Enschede, this proposal wants to foster preliminary discussion over proposals prior to Agora, and introducing a requirement of support from three European Bodies for a proposal to be discussed at Agora. Considering the time needed for discussion of proposals during Prytania, even when they are poorly designed, this change would ensure that proposals are discussed in advance and fine-tuned. If the changes are approved, it will be required a change in the online voting system that is feasible and the creation of an infrastructure in which locals can already show their support for proposals before the Agora. The proposed time-frame in which the proposals could collect statements of support from European Bodies is two weeks.

You can read the full proposal here.

Restriction of Reimbursement Criteria of Comité Directeur

Current Financial Director of AEGEE-Europe Zvonimir Canjuga on behalf of Comité Directeur proposes to set clearer rules for reimbursement of moving out costs, since at the moment, the form offers too much space for misinterpretation. If the changes were to be approved, the moving out reimbursement would be limited to the amount corresponding to the trip home or next proven place of residence with the cheapest travel option possible.

You can read the full proposal here.

Written by Federica Soro, AEGEE-Cagliari