Looking for accommodation in a new city is not easy. Well, it wasn’t, until now!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-FfDqC2tog

Are you moving abroad to work or to study?

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Every year, the ceremony for the European Youth Award takes place in Graz, Austria, in order to reward the most innovative and socially valuable projects in the field of human rights and democracy, created by young Europeans. AEGEE is an official partner of this contest, and this year Holger Schmitt (Network Director of AEGEE-Europe) represented the association. Currently, he is part of the online jury.

“The Youth Award wants to demonstrate the potential of young people to create innovative solutions through internet and mobile technology”, Holger explains. The partnership between AEGEE and the European Youth Award was established last Spring by former CD member Kathrin Renner. As a result, AEGEE-Europe sent the open call to present projects to the Youth Award to the whole Network, and it is now one of the juries of the contest.

Holger, Network Director of AEGEE-Europe, will be part of the Jury of the European Youth Award.

According to Holger, who represented AEGEE as part of the Grand Jury, the European Youth Awards aims to promote creative and innovative solutions proposed by young people to improve the society and the environment in general. It’s also a unique way of honoring and motivating young people to be active citizens and create initiatives to improve their environment or provide solutions to everyday problems. “For me it was impressive to see the incredible variety of projects in the fields of nutrition and healthcare, online-learning and open science, arts and games, resource management and sustainability, open government and social cohesion, financial literacy and smart consumption as well as urban development and e-mobility”, Holger says.

Holger became part of the Online Jury when Kathrin told the new Comité Directeur about that possibility: “Since I heard about the EYA award before and I was working in the field of Online Governance I seized the opportunity. Before, I have already been part of the Online Jury for the European Public Sector Award EPSA  which has a similar process of online evaluation, so I was already familiar with the process and the structure of the Online Jury”. As an online juror, he was assessing the creativity, innovation and social value of the projects and, as he says, experienced many different concepts and mindsets.

Selecting projects with a strong potential

Before Holger started evaluating the projects, he had a short discussion with the organisers, “where they presented me with the process and the requirements of the Online Jury: as Juror you are presented with a set of criteria for the evaluation of the projects, including the content, design of the platform, innovation, initiative, interactivity, impact and social value”. For each one of these criteria there was a list of indicators to evaluate them from 1-6, and during the four weeks of August he evaluated the cases in two rounds. The first round was aimed to make a preselection of the most innovative and mature projects in order to choose the digital champion in the second round. “I evaluated most cases by myself but luckily I did have the support of my CD team-mates in order to help me to assess several projects”, Holger adds.

When asked about the topics of the project, Holger highlights the variety and the strong messages that the projects presented had: some of them wanted to raise awareness to Third World problems, like a simulation game to develop an African village, trying to survive as a slum boy in the Phillipines in a simulation or promoting solar-run electric water pumps for people in crisis areas. Meanwhile, other projects aimed to increase transparency and exchange with policy makers, for example by asking questions to politicians, who would answer in video statements, or platforms to take part in online consultations of policy processes.

Moreover, other projects aimed to improve personal surroundings, like bringing together jobseekers and jobemployers locally, providing freespace for arts in the dense urban places, organizing seminars and youth projects or promoting free and quality education outside of the formal education system in the community. “I particularly liked projects that combined the digital community with local projects to strengthen cooperation in your home-city and this way provide solutions to everyday problems”, Holger adds.

Kids, I’m gonna tell you an incredible story, the story of how I met BEST (the Board of European Students of Technology). I joined one of their Regional Meetings (RM), which is the equivalent to our Network Meetings (NWM) but with more participants than we usually have. Not all sessions were mandatory, but instead there were some recommended and optional ones. It was a place for newbies, active members and alumni. A great place to learn and share.

Their random regions do not seem to work bad even if there are many different feelings about it, of course: there are no stable regions, but they arrange them totally randomly, which can work in order not to create any kind of “regional identity” but maybe difficult for the knowledge transfer inside their Local BEST Groups (LBG, our antennae) as well as for members to travel quite far to attend their RM.

I could not have find a better way to spend that weekend that with a bunch of Technology students that welcomed and integrated me as if I was one of them! I danced Tunak Tunak in the “BESTies” style; so I was feeling at home. We had a very nice and funny International Evening (IE) or, as we call it, European Night (EN); there was plenty of food and a death round (our EuroTrip), so you all know what I mean. It was like being in an AEGEE event but this time I shared it with new amazing people around, people that I also loved. Different associations, same great spirit. I know it; I am quite soppy!

I had the chance to learn further about BEST and about how they work, so we can use the things that seems to be working nicely for them; I made note of some topics I liked and that could be used in our Network (mainly for the NetCom when organising NWMs). It was more about people’s participation and opinions about their region and their locals development and cooperation between them than about trainers just telling stories or facts even if they also informed about their European level and about the issues concerning their whole Network; for example, discussing about the topics and candidates of their next General Assembly (GA), our Agorae. A member of the European Board (our Comité Directeur, CD) was also present in the RM just like we do in NWM to help connecting all levels easier.

I also had the opportunity to speak about what we do in AEGEE, how do we distribute areas, how my own antenna is working, how do we get fundraising, manage meals or any other issue related to events’ organisation. It was great for me to share and learn from them, and also the other way round, as we keep in contact to talk about several common topics. Our associations are really similar in terms of internal structure and we can still learn a lot from each other to improve ourselves and keep making AEGEE and BEST even more awesome. That is why we are partners, isn’t it?

Great job of Fergus Incoronato, the Regional Advisor (RA), our Network Commissioner, in charge of the content of the RM and of LBG Madrid Carlos III, the organising local. They all worked so hard for everyone to enjoy and make the most of this long weekend. Thanks again, lovely people!

As I already suggested to some antennae from my area and some LBGs: there is so much potential in this partnership that has not been developed yet; so let’s cooperate further, let’s organise some activities together… people, there’s strength in numbers!

P.S.: As it was not enough for me, I repeated the following week attending a Weekend Trip, part of the Spring Course of LBG Valencia as a guest… I am so in love with this people called BESTies!

Written by Carmen María López Banegas, AEGEE-Alicante