How many times, while planning an event, did you ask yourself ‘Am I organizing everything the right way?’ , ‘Do I have enough money?’ or ‘Is the event really AEGEE-like?’. It’s time to have an answer to all the questions you might have in terms of ‘AEGEEan’ event management: your solution is called Events Quality Assurance Committee (E.Q.A.C). The E.Q.A.C is in charge of an important mission: checking whether European events are organized in accordance with AEGEE standards and giving support to the locals in terms of event planning. Recently there was the election of the new E.Q.A.C team and the AEGEEan met them and their current speaker Inana Namet (AEGEE-Toulouse/Paris) in order to better understand in which terms the new members want to contribute to such an important committee and what are their plans for the future.

The AEGEEan: Hi Inana, thanks for having us. Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your experience in AEGEE? 

Inana: Hello AEGEEan ! My name is Inana from AEGEE-Toulouse (and AEGEE-Paris) and I have been a member since September 2010 (feeling old). Like many in AEGEE, I’ve met one person the first year who inspired me and encouraged me to be active ! Since then, I’ve been in my local’s board for 3 years, organized some events (TSU, local events etc.) participated also in some (NWM, Agora, SU, PRES). Now that I am taking a year off, I wanted to be much more active! I am currently Speaker of the E.Q.A.C. (I like organizing and analyzing stuff). I have a master degree in Applied Immunology (some Biology thing) that’s why I am also Liaison Officer towards WHO and UN AIDS. It’s challenging and I love it !

What is EQAC and which are its duties?

E.Q.A.C stands for Events Quality Assurance Committee (former Event Committee). We are responsible of assessing and deciding whether European events are in accordance with AEGEE standards. But most important we are here to help locals to organize events (providing guidelines, feedback) and we offer help in resolving possible problems in events’ organization.

Why is this committee so important for our network?

Well, currently a lot of events’ quality is not under assessment. But what do we mean exactly by quality ? Quality is about the content of the event (activities, workshops), logistics (does the local have the material available?), budget (is the event affordable for the local?), does it take into account the Strategy Plan and Action Agenda ? Is the fee affordable for the participants ? We intend to assess all European events (and more ) so we can have a picture of the whole network regarding quality and impact of organized events. Moreover AEGEE is aiming to develop non-formal education, so the committee helps in promoting those methods, monitors the activities organized to achieve it, measures the benefits it will have on both organizers and participants.

The E.Q.A.C has a new fresh team: who are its current members and which are their academic and ‘AEGEEan’ backgrounds? 

We are 4 in the team. Ioana Duca is our CD referee and Réka Salamon with Patrick Scholz are our advisors. Let’s start with

Lisa Zeltinger (AEGEE-Gdansk): AEGEE: member for almost 2 years, PR Responsible of AEGEE-Gdańsk, organizer in every event made in Gdańsk also, coordinator of the biggest NYE in AEGEE. She is studying Sea Trade and Transportation and she a member of the Sea Scientific Circle. They are cooperating with the university and making conferences, festivals. She also collaborated with an  event agency making cultural and music events. Their motto was ‘Everything is possible if you believe’ – and she believed joining AEGEE.

Maksym Kovalenko (AEGEE-Kyiv):  He is 24 and now he is working in the KOSTAL company as production planning engineer. He is an active member of AEGEE-Kyiv since 2011. Ever since He was in AEGEE, He always wanted to increase the quality of the projects and events. It is very hard work because AEGEE is a NGO and all stands on motivation. He would like to get experience from other locals and share his. His goal is to make AEGEE a more serious and reliable organization.

Zvonimir Canjuga (AEGEE-Zagreb):  Zvonimir Canjuga ,23, he is from from Zagreb. He’s studying Business and Economy at the University of Zagreb. He has been a member of AEGEE for almost 3 years. First, he was HR responsible, and currently he is the president of AEGEE-Zagreb. From the European point of view, he is the Vice-Speaker of the Human Resources Committee along with E.Q.A.C. His experience in organizing events motivated him the most in joining E.Q.A.C. His goal here is to help AEGEEans to plan their events in the best way possible.

Recently you had your team meeting: Which were the main topics you discussed about?

Well first, we now know each other, so it is much more interesting to work together. We had some team building (cooking for CD and cleaning the kitchen were challenging and we can say it was E.Q.A.C. approved) and we worked a lot. We designed a new logo during this weekend, worked on the assessment form, so locals can fill it in more easily and we can do a better analysis on the data provided. We worked on E.Q.A.C presentation and guidelines, PR strategy (we are here to help not to add more work, you know), cooperation with other European bodies, started to create assessment guidelines for our members, and a little surprise that will be released soon! So as you can see, we are a team highly motivated, which has already worked a lot!

Are you going to follow in the footsteps of the former E.Q.A.C team?

The former E.Q.A.C had great ideas, but didn’t have time to implement them. We are going to improve them, but our team is highly motivated and creative so we will also develop new ones.

Do you want to bring something new in this committee? What are your future plans?

Well firstly we wanted to change our logo.Then lots of projects, ideas and strategies are planned. The most important one is that locals understand we are here to help them in organizing events and providing them information.We want to create some templates for events’ organization (budget with the audit commission, incoming responsible file). We also want to cooperate much more with ACT, NetCom and Academy. Then developing our event assessment and evaluation form so we can use it as data collector to have a better idea on what’s going on in the network. We will also try to create a library of grants so we can help locals get funding more easily by providing them examples of FR files.

How can our readers get in touch with you?

How? Easy! Send us an email at: quality.events@aegee.org and we will answer in a blink! We also have our Facebook page: and Members Portal.

Written by Larisa Smajlagic, AEGEE-Verona

“So you have just arrived home from your last AEGEE event where that guy was telling you about a European level body in AEGEE he was secretary of and was convincing you to join the team based on the common interests you share. Sounds good but maybe you want to learn a little more about this body, so let us turn to Google for a second. Well, this page has AEGEE on it and the name of the body but the last post is from 2012. Are they doing anything then? And if they do, where can you find the information? Ah, giving up, maybe it is not a good idea to join after all…”

Have you ever been surprised by the amount of pages related to AEGEE, or how many of them are outdated or simply abandoned, or how many different appearances these pages have – as if they did not belong to the same organisation?

We have good news for you: all the information you need about AEGEE is in one place now, always updated and following our new Visual Identity: the Members Portal has been launched!

And let’s see the 5 (top) reasons why you should visit the Portal:

1. AEGEE History Line: With AEGEE celebrating its 30th anniversary next year, there is a lot to read about the past to get inspired by the great achievements and to recruit new AEGEE-enthusiasts for your local by telling the true story of how awesome AEGEE is. But forget about a never-ending PDF file: check out the interactive AEGEE history timeline!

2. Get Involved!: You are already a hyperactive member of your local but feel like you would like to challenge yourself a little more by joining one of the Projects or Working Groups? The Get Involved! section contains all updates from all European level bodies in AEGEE from their latest activities to the application process for new team members, presenting a clearly structured system of Committees, Commissions and Working Groups. “We need you!”

3. Downloadable Materials: Under Resources you can find various guidelines that will help you understand AEGEE better, the Strategic Plan to help others understand AEGEE’s work better, and you can also download PR materials for promoting AEGEE in your city! (Compulsory advertisement here: in case you are interested in developing further materials, please contact the Public Relations Committee at prc@aegee.org!)

4. Offers for members: Check out the list of our partners and the various discounts they offer for AEGEE members. Also – do you know what ASRF stands for? It is way of benefitting or contributing to our shared interest of overcoming financial obstacles that would permit some of our members from fully experiencing AEGEE – this is all I can tell here!

5. Events: Being directly connected to Intranet, the Members Portal offers an always updated page about the next AEGEE events that are going to take place. Furthermore, the PRC and the Quality Assurance Committee are working on another platform to have a clear overview of AEGEE events, open calls and finding a way to help the locals with the promotion of their events. Stay tuned!

Convinced? With the endless amount of concentrated information on this page, you should bookmark aegee.org/portal in your browser right now!

And if you would like to submit your suggestions for improving the Members Portal, please fill in the following form!

Last but not least, we would all like to thank Pavel Zbornik – Communications and European Institutions Director of AEGEE-Europe who has dedicated an endless amount of his time creating the Portal and making our lives easier. Thank you, Pavel!

 Written by Réka Salamon, AEGEE-Debrecen/Aachen

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)