In this article we are talking about the various languages spoken among AEGEE members.  We know that English is the most common language in the world, but also other languages find some space in our Network, therefore  we have asked Erifyli Evangelou, a member of the Language Interest Group, to tell us something about the situation of the languages inside our students’ association.

We know for sure that English is not the only foreign language spoken in AEGEE, even though it represents the one we use to communicate among us in ninety per cent of the cases. There are other languages such as Spanish, not only inside Spanish Antennas but also diffused in many Locals, where there are many students who study Spanish for example. We can also consider German an other language you can find in many European countries. However, we do not have any statistics yet. That is why the Language Interest Group reveals to us their plan to make a survey about languages in AEGEE. In this plan, the Interest Group will answer to the following questions: which are the most spoken ones, where do people learn the languages and what do they do to improve them.

We also know that not all nationalities are able to speak English in the same way. According to the opinion of most AEGEE members, Italians and Spanish show the worst spoken English. Some AEGEEans say that the best English is spoken by Dutch guys. Dutch is a bit similar to English, being an anglo-germanic language within the Germanic languages, meaning it shares a common ancestor with languages such as English, German, and the Scandinavian languages. That’s why it shares many common words with English. At the same time, we do not have to be limited to these stereotypes linked to the language families in which English belongs, and Italian and Spanish do not.  We will have to wait, then, for the survey of the LIG in order to discover the answers to our questions. The same question presents and discussed in many lunches or dinners among AEGEE members.

The goal of the Language Interest Group is to raise awareness within AEGEE about the value of multilingualism, encourage and help AEGEEans to learn more foreign languages and discuss issues related to language policies, minority languages and language diversity. The group has different ongoing projects, like the European Day of Languages or the Travel Dictionaries Project. Furthermore, it is cooperating with Language SUs, giving workshops at Agorae and EPM and it is present at the Fairs. Additionally, it also has temporary projects like the AEGEE Day video or preparing language quizzes and games. In fact, with the help of some active members and many Antennas, the LIG has collected multilingual greetings from all over the AEGEE network. Every AEGEE member can watch our video here.

About the next plans, Erifyli tells us that the LIG is planning to create a multilingual European music playlist, so that AEGEEans can listen to cool songs in every AEGEE language. Furthermore, they are going to publish soon their Travel Dictionaries in many languages and if you attend Agora Bergamo it could be that you see some members of the LIG recording many different people saying something in their language.

Erifyli Evangelou gives some tips for AEGEEans who want to improve their English. In particular, the LIG encourages them “To go to many events and once being there, don’t be only with people who speak your language. Talk a lot to people from other countries, do not get frustrated if you make mistakes and be patient with yourself!” Other options to improve a language are organising a language tandem or other language activities in your Antenna or get involved in a European project, because there the working language is for sure English. “The most important thing is to get out of your comfort zone and not be afraid of speaking English! Only those who try, can succeed!” adds Erifyli.

Written by Matteo Lai, AEGEE-Cagliari.

Have you ever thought to make a survey about people who study abroad? The Lifestyle in Mobility project partners did. We spoke with Svenja van der Tol, 23 years old and the Secretary General of AEGEE-Europe, who explains us something about her project involving also Erasmus students denominated “Lifestyle in Mobility”.

Lifestyle in Mobility is a collaborative research project of the Catholic University of Milan, AEGEE-Europe and Cardiff University. The aim of the project is to investigate how study abroad students’ (for example with Erasmus) lifestyle and health behaviours change during their period abroad and once returned to their home countries. When we say “lifestyle and health behaviours”, we mean things like eating behaviour, physical exercise, alcohol consumption, etc. For this project, students are asked to fill in three surveys: one before they go abroad, one while they are abroad and one after they came back. In the past months, AEGEE-Europe and the two universities have shared the survey with students before they were going abroad, with the help of AEGEE locals. In the upcoming month, these students will get the second survey and make a chance at cool prices like Interrail passes and Amazon giftcards. Next to that, it is the turn of another round of finding students who will go abroad in the second semester, so all students going abroad this academic year (2015-2016) will be reached out to.

Every year hundreds of thousands of study abroad students travel to countries other than their own to pursue tertiary studies. During the academic year 2012-2013 nearly 270000 students from 33 European countries participated in the Erasmus programme (now Erasmus +) spending up to 10 months in countries across Europe. The typical Study Abroad Student is a cosmopolitan, well-educated young person with lots of interests related to cultural exchange, international education and life achievement. In spite of Study Abroad Students being a fast growing population of young people that more than doubled in the last ten years, little is known about their lifestyle during their period abroad.

When Svenja asked at Autumn Agora Kyïv who in the room had been abroad, she saw a lot of hands raised. Many AEGEEans have studied abroad, are studying abroad or planning to do so. “Studying abroad and how it affects your lifestyle is therefore a relevant topic to our members”, says Svenja, “and with the results of this project we can visualize the effects of studying abroad on health and lifestyle, and hopefully give recommendations to ensure the health of students abroad. Besides that, since we have locals all over Europe, we can easily find students all over Europe, which is important for the research.”

AEGEE-Europe’s task in the project is to find the participants to fill in the survey. To do that, it has asked locals to spread the survey with study abroad students in their city. At the end of the project, AEGEE-Europe will organize a conference in Brussels to share the results of this project. Asking Svenja for the results of this project up to now, she replies: “Since the first round of the project already took place, we have the results of these participants, but the results we are aiming for are those that give a broader picture, including the data while abroad and after returning home.” The majority of people that filled in the survey is going abroad with Erasmus, but the research project is open to students that are studying abroad with all programs too.

Written by Matteo Lai, AEGEE-Cagliari

Last November, Hanna Alajõe, Hendrik Roland Helm and Carmen Küdorf reached out to all AEGEEans with a survey for which they needed nine hundred volunteers in total from European countries. The results for the survey will be used for their bachelor thesis, which deals with the subject of European youth’s perceptions of their body and attitude towards social nudity. The AEGEEan spoke to the three AEGEE-Tartu members, who all study Psychology, to find out more about the topic and their reasons to choose it as a subject for their bachelor thesis

Carmen second on the right, Hanna third and Hendrik fourth

When asked what made them choose European youth’s perceptions of their body and attitude towards social nudity as the subject for their bachelor thesis, the three explain that they got the idea during EBM Lublin. “We noticed that some people were showering with swimsuits and started to discuss it, because due to the sauna culture in Estonia we are comfortable with being naked in public showers. That’s how we got the idea to learn more about how other countries and cultures feel about social nudity (meaning being naked in places like public showers and saunas) and their bodies in general!”

By doing this research, the three hope to learn more about how different aspects of culture can affect our body image, values and attitudes. “We expect to find some differences between the countries and the different areas of Europe. There are many studies of values of different European countries, so we can compare the results and see if the way we look at our body and how we behave is influenced by our personal and our countries’ general values.” Ideally, the three hope to find out more about which cultures would like more privacy in public washing rooms and which don’t mind, giving organisers the chance to adjust the facilities according to the needs of their participants, if possible.

An example of the prize package that people who fill out the survey can win

To research the differences in culture, people from Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine and the Netherlands are asked to fill out their survey, in order to make sure that the different European regions based on geographical and cultural criteria are covered. “We would like to get a hundred answers from every country, nine hundred in total. So far 505 people have started to fill out the survey, but only half of them answered it completely. We still have a long way to go and not a lot of time left, so please help us finish it!” Next to helping out the three AEGEEans by taking 10 – 15 minutes of your time, you will also be able to win a special Estonian prize package.

Do you want to help out Hanna, Hendrik and Carmen? You can find their survey here!

Written by Svenja van der Tol, AEGEE-Nijmegen

What do AEGEE members understand when talking about sustainability? Where did they learn about this? And how would they like AEGEE to be involved with this topic? Finding out the answers to these questions was the aim of the survey on sustainability which was completed by almost 120 people from over 60 locals all around the network. Both multiple choice and qualitative answers were analysed and quantified, and will serve as input for AEGEE’s position paper on sustainability.

Sustainability is…

… a buzzword/often misunderstood/a way of thinking/ a clear path for action/ all of the above. One thing is clear: ask 120 people about their understanding of sustainability and you will get 120 different answers. This can however only enrich the debate, as a concept as complex as sustainability can only be understood and operationalised by looking at it from multiple angles at the same time. So — at risk of generalisation — what do AEGEE members think of sustainability?

Sustainability is the way of living, creating public policy and economic growth that takes into account environmental issues and will help to preserve natural resources for future generations.”

This explanation by a respondent from AEGEE-Poznań perhaps succeeds the best at capturing the wide range of ideas and definitions collected through the survey. For when analysed the answers fell broadly into a number of categories, of which the most important keywords are (in order of frequency): Future, Resources, Green, 3 elements, and Balance.

One in two respondents focus on long-term thinking and planning, preserving our planet and quality of life for future generations. This requires a different approach at resource usage and the introduction of closed-loop production and consumption systems. While many respondents mentioned the classical 3 components of sustainability — economy, society, and environment — and the balance between them, over 20% however, still see sustainability in a predominantly green light.

Education for sustainability

So even though 91% of respondents have at least some notions of sustainability, there is still some room for improvement. How much do AEGEE members — and youth in general — know about sustainability, and how much of this did they learn at school? It is true that the basics are being discussed in primary and secondary school — think water cycle and geography field trips —, but this “decreases as you pass to the next level of education, as the education becomes more specific and ‘serious’”, says a member of AEGEE-Valladolid.

Almost three in four respondents feel there is not enough attention for sustainability within formal education and 48% even estimate that sustainability-wise their time at school was a waste of time, with another third only learning a little about it.

On the other hand less than 25% believe they don’t know enough about the topic to do anything themselves. So where do people get their knowledge from then? This is where non-formal education (NFE) comes in, says Bogdan from AEGEE-Bucureşti: “I only found out about this from my AEGEE local.”

For one in three respondents, NFE is also a more suitable method for teaching sustainability than formal education. “Non-formal education is better in showing people ways to live more sustainable instead of simply telling them what to do”, says Wieke of AEGEE-Leuven, and Nolwen (AEGEE-Toulouse) continues: “Sustainability is about reforming our societies deeply and fundamentally, it therefore requires non-formal education, out of books, it requires to learn by doing, by discussing.”

Time for action

While playing a big role in teaching young people about sustainability, NGOs (28%) score significantly lower than e.g. national government (33%) when respondents are being asked to rank 6 stakeholders in order of importance to take initiative in making life more sustainable (weighted average 30%). It is therefore crucial to cooperate with all stakeholders in pursuing sustainability, including national and local government, business, youth and other NGOs, citizens’ initiatives, and individuals.

What role do respondents then see for organisations such as AEGEE?

Like many things, sustainability starts at home. For Guillermo Garcia Tabares of AEGEE-Barcelona, we should “first of all establish some obligatory criteria for all events. Secondly, create best practices which are easy to follow.” Only then, he says, should we start working on bigger projects. Again analysing the answers, we can see that respondents suggest a number of possible approaches.

More than one in five support Guillermo’s proposal for internal sustainability standards, while slightly more people would like to see Environmental Working Group and others to provide assistance to members and organisers to become more sustainable. Most respondents favour the raising of awareness and spreading of knowledge through workshops, but as this was not a multiple choice question, this serves mostly as a first step towards a more active engagement. Finally, remarkable are also the 15% who suggest raising our voice externally, by lobbying institutions for more sustainability or partnering with other youth organisations.

And now?

Credits to Jjpacres on Flickr

After defining the topic and conducting a survey to gather the first input, the next step is to launch an online consultation on the topic of sustainability — more in particular education for sustainability. This process will be informed by a lay of the land in Europe, and will define the basis for future lobbying for more attention for sustainability in both formal and non-formal education.

On sustainable entrepreneurship, the second subtopic proposed at Agora Budapest, not sufficient knowledge and outspoken opinions seem to be available within AEGEE at the moment. While I will continue to research the topic and share useful opportunities, it might be too soon for AEGEE to take a position on this. Rather, more time and efforts should first be invested in raising people’s understanding of, and experience with entrepreneurship as such, e.g. through successful projects such as the European School on Entrepreneurship or collaborations with Startup Pirates and other specialised initiatives.

Written by Mathieu Soete, Policy Officer on Sustainability