Agora Enschede is approaching and as the past Agora, the AEGEEan will try to help you to understand more the Proposals which will be discussed during the Prytania. These four are about the Locals and how they function.

Improving Regulations on Contracts

Proposed by Jorge Sánchez Hernández on behalf of AEGEE-Dresden. During Autumn Agora Cagliari 2014 the denomination given to a contact was changed from “Contact of AEGEE-Europe in cityname” to “AEGEE Contact in cityname”. This was decided to make PR easier for Contacts. At that time this change was not included in the CIA, so this is the case.

Furthermore, the proposer would like to allow Contacts to send more than two observers to the Agorae, in order to educate the new members that attending an Agora is a very important matter for an AEGEEan. This has also the aim to decrease the number of people going to an Agora as Visitors just to visit the hosting city and party hard.

You can read the full proposal here.

Updated Cd’A of AEGEE-Academy

Lia Tuska and Zvonimir Canjuga on behalf of Comité Directeur are proposing to strengthen the cooperation between AEGEE-Europe and AEGEE-Academy by updating the Convention d’Adehsion of the latter.

The commitment of AEGEE-Academy to provide training to AEGEE-Europe will be more specific. So not only AEGEE-Academy has to provide trainings to the individual members of Locals, but also skills development opportunities, based on Non-Formal Education methodologies, to AEGEE locals, as well as their individual members of Locals. Moreover AEGEE-Europe will recognise The Academy as the official pool of trainers of AEGEE-Europe.

AEGEE-Academy as a training organisation has developed during the years of its existence partnerships and relationships with other organisations, so in this proposal we can find more specific information about how and with whom it can cooperate. This has the purpose to give more independency to the Academy, which will have the right to collaborate with any organisation with similar scope, except for the ones in which AEGEE-Europe holds a position as member, partner, advisor or consultative status.

Moreover the Comité Directeur will appoint a member to be part of the board of the Academy who will have the same rights and obligations of the others elected board members. The Academy should also commit to support AEGEE-Europe and all its members, partner organisations and organs in all the internal educational needs with relevant training activities.

You can read the full proposal here.

Rewriting the Antenna Criterion number 12 included in: Antenna – Remaining an Antenna

Let’s start explaining what we are talking about (if you know how the Action Agenda and Strategic Plan work you can skip the first paragraph)!

The Strategic Plan (SP) is drafted every three years during an event called Planning Meeting. In the thematic part of this document you can find the Focus Areas on which AEGEE will concentrate its activities and events. The ones we will have starting from the 1st of August will be Civic Education, European Citizenship, Youth Development and Equal Rights. The Action Agenda (AA) is drafted each year in an event called European Planning Meeting (EPM). This is like a yearly list of objectives that tries to put into practice what is written in the Strategic Plan. So it can happen that if you organise an event about Youth Development (Focus Areas of the SP) but you do not fulfill the Action Agenda objectives related to that Focus Area, it is not counted as an event that contributes to the Action Agenda. The Action Agenda Coordination Committee (ACT) is the one who controls and approves if the locals have organised or not activities which contribute to the Action Agenda.

Experiencing this everyday, Juragis García, Cristina de la Parte and Svenja van der Tool on behalf of Action Agenda Coordination Committee would like to change the 12th criterion for remaining an Antenna. Right now it states that it’s a duty of an antenna to organise at least once every two years a European Event that contributes to the Strategic Plan. In case a local cannot organise it, it can be replaced by two local activities contributing to the Strategic Plan.

This proposal will make the locals organise two local activities each year (which can be replaced by a European Event – the opposite of how it is now) which contribute to the Action Agenda and not the Strategic Plan anymore. These activities must be approved by the Action Agenda Coordination Committee beforehand. This process is structured like this: the local sends an email to the ACT explaining the activity they would like to organise. Afterward the ACT will approve or not the activity. Moreover, this criterion obliges locals to maintain an active communication with the ACT, via the ACTie they have been assigned to.

You can read the full proposal here.

Antennae Criteria Reform proposal

Six months ago the Network Commission handed out a survey to gather opinions of the locals regarding Antenna Criteria. After processing all these data, Alejandra Piot Pérez-Abadín, Aleksandra Mojsova, Alin Andrei Georgescu, Gabriele Scollo, Kristina Reshetova, Loes Rutten, Mareike Ritter, Pablo Palazón Riquelme, Spyros Papadatos and Stanislav Mahula on behalf of the Network Commission drafted an Antenna Criteria Reform Proposal that is presented. Here below in bullet points the list of changes.

Remaining a Contact Antenna:

• The Contact Antennae will not have to create a bank account to keep that status, but only to become Antennae.

Remaining an Antenna:

• Now locals should send delegates to at least one out of the last three Statutory Events (usually 2 agorae and 1 EPM). With this proposal locals will have to send their delegates at least to one of the last two Agorae.
• Locals should send at least one of their board members to a NWM. With this proposal, if none of the board members can join this event, they can appoint an active member who will represent the Antenna in a NWM. This request will need to be approved by the Network Commission or the Comité Directeur.
• Each Board should send an Activity Plan to the NetCom within one month since they are elected and an Activity Report within two weeks from the end of their term. This proposal would like to extend both these deadlines to two months. Moreover the Activity Plan will need to be discussed with their Network Commissioner in a meeting arranged by the local. Same thing with the Activity Report, but the conclusions will need to be written down in an Evaluation Report. Unfortunately it is not possible to understand which conclusions the proposers are talking about. We will discover more on Prytannium!

You can read the full proposal here.

Written by Lisa Gregis, AEGEE-Bergamo & AEGEE-Verona

AEGEE-Europe and the Comité Directeur (CD) are the seven members, elected by the Spring Agora, serving a one-year term living in Brussels, in the AEGEE house or “headoffice”, working as full-time volunteers on AEGEE matters. From financial administration to members lists, from project development to communication, from external relations and lobbying towards EU institutions, the CD is working on many different things each year – all in the best interest of the AEGEE network and its locals.

While the CD might sound like a group of semi-fun bureaucrats, the AEGEE spirit stayed with us!
In the middle of the preparations for EPM Zagreb, spring Network Meetings, Spring Agora Enschede and many many other amazing events, this year, the Comité Directeur has decided to combine travels to EPM Zagreb with a small network trip in order to visit several locals between Brussels and Zagreb taking a trip to get to Zagreb between the 13th and the 22nd of February, and a trip back between the 1st and the 7th of March.

What is CD on Track? Exactly what it sounds like!
Réka, Tekla and Zvonimir will be on the route together and separately visiting AEGEE locals who were kind enough to host, and in return the CD members on track are gladly visiting locals’ partners and university offices, organising sessions for the members of the locals, meetings with the boards, discussions on the present and future of AEGEE, and most importantly: bringing AEGEE-Europe closer to the locals.

The idea came from the Comité Directeur 2016/2017’s common understanding that it is essential for AEGEE-Europe to have a direct experience in order to support the ‘state of the network’ research we are conducting this year. Besides surveys and online consultations, the best way to find out the state of our locals is by understanding their realities and by having an honest conversation with them.

From fundraising matters, to cooperation with other organisations, from development of the area of your local to how to get more active members – we are happy to offer the historic knowledge from head office, lots of good practices and great spirit. As well as we will be happy to listen to your wishes and concerns, your feedback and explore the many different ways we are all experiencing AEGEE.

We have received a lot of excited replies from AEGEE locals requesting sessions about the birth of the Erasmus programme, training for the board members, visiting the mayor’s office and holding information night for university students about what is AEGEE. We will be happy to support their work to fulfill all of them!

If you want to follow CD on Track ( #CDontrack ), you can check out the following routes and cities we will be crossing:

Tekla

Locals: AEGEE-Lille, AEGEE-Torino, AEGEE-Milano, AEGEE-Brescia, AEGEE-Udine, AEGEE-Ljubljana, EPM ZAGREB, AEGEE-Munchen, AEGEE-Stuttgart, AEGEE-Mannheim, AEGEE-Mainz-Wiesbaden, AEGEE-Köln

Zvonimir

Locals: AEGEE-Leon, AEGEE-Torino, AEGEE-Firenze, AEGEE-Bologna, AEGEE-Udine, AEGEE-Ljubljana, EPM ZAGREB, AEGEE-Wien, AEGEE-Passau, AEGEE-Heidelberg, AEGEE-Dusseldorf

Réka

Locals: AEGEE-Toulouse, AEGEE-Torino, AEGEE-Bergamo, AEGEE-Treviso, AEGEE-Udine, AEGEE-Ljubljana, AEGEE-Maribor, EPM ZAGREB, [to be confirmed:] AEGEE-Novi Sad, AEGEE-Beograd, AEGEE-Kragujevac, AEGEE-Nis, AEGEE-Skopje, [final stop to be decided]

And because we strive for transparency in our actions, we would also like to invite you to read the extra section that aims to clarify some of the most frequent reactions we received to the idea of the trip:

Q: Is CD going on holidays?

A: No. We will work during the day on session preparations for you, and will also be continuing our daily office work on the way. We would also like to blog about the trip to show the externals the activities and beauties of your cities, as well as supporting the visited locals on spot and providing sessions/consultation according to their needs.

Q: If Network Director, Financial Director and President are leaving the office, who is going to take care of the most urgent requests and contacts, and the external relations in Brussels?

A: The CD members on track will not be completely offline during the trip. We have learnt to be able to work online among various circumstances, and we are sure the trip will not cause major delays in our work. Besides, the four CD members staying in office will be perfectly able to answer all urgent requests, as well as take care of the external relations and event attendance in Brussels.

Q: CD is supposed to book the cheapest travel option possible according to the rules to all events in order to receive reimbursement. Isn’t this trip more expensive?

A: Our currently expiring contract with InterRail has provided us with the free passes that make the trip together with the reservation fees to result in similar expenses as taking a return flight to Zagreb.
Follow the updates on Facebook / Twitter and #CDonTrack!

Hope to see many of your ‘on the Track’ or in EPM Zagreb!
Warm greetings from Réka, Tekla and Zvonimir,

With the moral support of Joanna, Kasia, Lia and Maarten