Never underestimate what you do in AEGEE: what you learn here can help you discover new strengths in your personality, hone your skills and boost your career! Let us inspire you. In cooperation with the Youth Development Working Group, the AEGEEan launches a series of career stories which all started thanks to the invaluable experience gained by being active in AEGEE. This week, Julia Krebs presents herself.

Julia Krebs, AEGEE-Osnabrück

My name is Julia and I started studying international relations and management in my hometown in Germany in 2009. After my bachelors, I went to study European Studies in Osnabrück. Even before I moved there, I already looked for something international that I could do in this small town. That is how I found AEGEE: Once I had arrived to Osnabrück, I went to AEGEE meetings and got immediately involved as Treasurer. Thanks to my involvement in AEGEE, one of my professors encouraged me to apply for the College of Europe, a very prestigious school for European politics. I had previously never thought about applying there, since my grades were not the best, but my professor encouraged me to apply anyways. In hindsight I think that having AEGEE on my CV definitely helped me in being accepted at this university.

After having finished my masters, I started a job at a big German private foundation. I worked there in a junior position somewhere between an intern and a project manager. This entry level position was very popular which is why I asked my bosses why they chose me. During the job interview, I had to write one exercise that included a question about project management and event organisation. My bosses told me that this exercise had set me far apart from my peers because it became clear that I had worked in projects before and I knew what to take into account when organizing events – a skill that I definitely acquired through my engagement in AEGEE.

After one year at this job, I changed jobs to the job that I have now. I am a project officer working for a research network called TEPSA – the Trans European Policy Studies Association. We have members from all over Europe that work on EU affairs in their country. I think it is already becoming clear that this is the perfect job for an AEGEEan. My organisations feels a bit like AEGEE for grown-ups. We have General Assemblies every 6 months where all members come together and it is always another member that is organizing it. Apart from the institutional insight into networks that I gained from attending numerous Agorae and other meetings in AEGEE, I found one thing especially useful: working in international teams. Not only is our team in the office very international, but also I am working mostly on one project that deals with EU-Central Asia relations. In this project, our partners are based in 11 countries which means that we have to communicate mostly online, something that I also already experienced a lot during my AEGEE time.

All these skills helped me a great deal in getting jobs but also in succeeding in these jobs. However, the most important for me were not certain skills or experiences that I have acquired throughout my AEGEE life but the people. You don’t only find friends for life but you also build up a European network all over Europe and also in Brussels.

Never underestimate what you do in AEGEE: what you learn here can help you discover new strengths in your personality, hone your skills and boost your career! Let us inspire you. In cooperation with the Youth Development Working Group, the AEGEEan launches a series of career stories which all started thanks to the invaluable experience gained by being active in AEGEE. This week, Renate van Breugel presents herself.

Renate van Breugel, AEGEE-Leiden

My name is Renate van Breugel and I was the Treasurer and European Affairs Officer of AEGEE-Leiden in 2015-2016. During my board year I was lucky enough to have met several interesting people. One of those meetings happened during a lecture that I had organised with our European Committee. This was a lecture about IS and the consequences for the Netherlands. We had two Dutch Members of Parliament and a Dutch European Parliament Member to debate the issues relating to IS. After this lecture I stayed in touch with one of our Dutch MPs and she offered me an internship with her, which I gratefully accepted. Thus my first internship began. I was her shadow for more than three months and I learned a lot from her. To this day I am very grateful to her for giving me the opportunity and believing in me.

After this internship and the experience I had gotten from AEGEE and our Dutch Parliament, many more followed. I’ve done internships at De Brauw Blackstone and Westbroek, the Permanent Representation of the Netherlands to the Council of Europe and one at the Council of Europe itself. Right now I am doing my masters in Public International Law and I hope to work for an international organisation when I am graduated.

Without AEGEE-Leiden and my board year I would not have had the connections that helped me to get my internships. They all followed one after the other, it really was like a snowball effect. Though my internships had not that much to do with my Treasurer tasks, my board year helped me to develop lobbying and management skills, which come in handy when doing an internship or working in your job. Also stress- and crisis-management are things I have learned during my board year. Those skills always come in handy.

At that time I did not realise how much you learn and how much you grow when you are in charge of an organisation like AEGEE-Leiden, but looking back I can say that it has definitely helped me prepare for the real grown-up world. Furthermore, AEGEE-Leiden has given me a wonderful friendship with my two board members Stefan and Fleur, which will hopefully last a lifetime.

I would recommend my fellow AEGEEans to make the most of your time with AEGEE. Go to as many events as you can; apply for a board year; make international friends; learn as much as you can, but above all have lots of fun and do not be afraid to fail!  

Never underestimate what you do in AEGEE: what you learn here can help you discover new strengths in your personality, hone your skills and boost your career! Let us inspire you. In cooperation with the Youth Development Working Group, the AEGEEan launches a series of career stories which all started thanks to the invaluable experience gained by being active in AEGEE. This week, Oksana Spolyak and Álvaro González present themselves.

Oksana Spolyak, AEGEE-Lviv

I am a linguist by profession, specialized in foreign languages. I was teaching English during my university years and a year later after graduation. Actually, it was the experience of event management in AEGEE that motivated me apply for a different job. By that time I became the secretary of our antenna, coordinated one local educational project, had been a core team member of Agora Kyiv 2015, and been in the middle of coordinating the Ukrainian part of TSU “Tale of Slavic Twins” with AEGEE-Krakow, apart from  helping and organizing other different local and European events in my native local of AEGEE-Lviv. Honestly, I didn’t consider that experience as something that could get me a job in another field than of my specialization.

After approximately half a year of unsuccessful attempts,  just before the departure to Agora Bergamo (laughing), I was heading to an interview at the Lviv City Council for the position of a project manager in the Lviv Convention Bureau. The experience of coordinating two AEGEE projects stood above my occupation as an English teacher in my CV. And I was really surprised to hear these words from my future boss, “Wow, that’s impressive!” She was talking about my AEGEE experience. I really couldn’t understand how extracurricular activities like volunteering in some NGO could get me a job. But it did.And not just  the two aforementioned experiences with AEGEE, but the overall experience and skills developed at AEGEE in around 3 years helped me later in my daily work at a convention bureau where I continue to work.

The main idea of the Convention Bureau is to promote the city as a meetings destination, being a kind of liaison between international meeting planners/association representatives and local service providers. Through my experience at AEGEE, I could draw parallels to the work and structure of big organizations/associations. I was able to organize my first familiarization trip to the city for foreign meeting planners on my own. I later became a coordinator of an international profile conference for 80, meeting industry professionals at the age of 23. The public speaking experience gained during recruitment presentations of AEGEE-Lviv served as a good basis for improving these skills at my job. I was able to positively leverage this experience at B2B meetings at different trade shows, and the quite recent presentation of Lviv’s meetings’ potential in front of around 150 tourism professionals from Latvia served me as well.

These are just a few examples how AEGEE helped me in my career. My advice to all fellow AEGEEans would be to value the experience you get in AEGEE, present it confidently and use every opportunity in our organization that you find relevant. And don’t forget to enjoy yourself while you’re at it (smiles).  

Álvaro González Pérez, an Ambassador of “Europe on Track”-2019

When I joined AEGEE, both my studies and the career I was building were completely different from what I am currently doing. For my BA degree, I was studying English, Philology, and teaching languages. Although I have always known that languages are my passion, I always doubted about being a teacher or a translator, until I got to know AEGEE during my Erasmus in Osnabrück. Joining the association gave me room to develop the skills that I did not know I possessed.

From the time that I delivered my first workshop, being nervous and insecure in front of an audience of about just 20 people, to where I am now, writing this while about to begin my journey in Europe on Track, for which I feel more than prepared and where I will be delivering workshops in 10 cities around Europe for up to 100 people. Being in AEGEE has also provided me the opportunity to get to know about other trainings or events from other associations.

Regarding the career that I would like to pursue now, working on projects, the fact that I coordinated the AEGEE European Day of Languages 2016 edition (with no experience at the time on project management) and European Citizenship Working Group (ECWG) opened several doors. For instance, in my last working position as project assistant, I was dealing with, among other things, EU projects with budgets of up to 1.5 million €, something I could have never expected had I not gained the experience I didin our network. Furthermore, it also allowed me to identify that I was more into sociology and international relations (that is why I did my MA in European Studies). And last but not least, it allowed me to realise that I definitely want to keep working professionally in civil society.

Indeed, AEGEE is volunteering. It’s about making a change in our society and trying to shape Europe as we think it should be. But it’s also about personal development and I could not be more grateful to it for having given me the tools and the space to allow me to develop in order to into the person that I am today.

Never underestimate what you do in AEGEE: what you learn here can help you discover new strengths in your personality, hone your skills and boost your career! Let us inspire you. In cooperation with the Youth Development Working Group, the AEGEEan launches a series of career stories which all started thanks to the invaluable experience gained by being active in AEGEE. This week, Viola Bianchetti and Alperen Yavuz present themselves.

Viola Bianchetti, Projects Director of AEGEE-Europe

My experience with job seeking is definitely not extensive, but still I could notice that my AEGEE experience has been a valuable addition to my CV and also an important asset in a working environment. In Autumn 2017 I applied for a traineeship at the European Economic and Social Committee, a consultative body of the European Union. The selection process for any traineeship in the EU institutions is very competitive, and usually successful candidates already hold a Master degree, while I was still in the third semester of my M.A. course. Moreover, being Italian is a disadvantage, since there are national quotas and the number of Italian applicants is always very high. This said, I did not have many hopes to be accepted, but I was! It is easy to imagine that my AEGEE experience made a difference between me and other candidates, even though I do not have a proof of it. At that moment, my experience in AEGEE accounted for one year as part of the local board of AEGEE-Bologna, almost two years as team member of an international project (Your Vision for Europe), and I was at the time starting my mandate as coordinator of a Working Group.

Once I started my traineeship, I could easily see that my AEGEE experience was very useful in my everyday tasks. The unit where I was working was in charge of institutional relations between the EU and the civil society sector, and the experience which I gathered in the European level of AEGEE enabled me to understand very quickly who the civil society actors involved were and what their relation with EU institutions was. Moreover, most of my knowledge of EU institutions came from my involvement in the project Your Vision for Europe, rather than from my studies.

The soft skills which I developed in AEGEE were also very useful in a professional environment. My colleagues were quite surprised by the fact that I was proactive, quick and I did not need a lot of explanations. I soon realised that I was used to doing things with very few instructions, just learning by doing, and I was not scared of making mistakes. Moreover, during my traineeship my unit organised three conferences and my experience in event management in AEGEE was very useful in that. Besides the tasks related to the preparations of the conference, I was also helping with logistics during the day of the event. My experience in AEGEE was very important in this, as I could quickly see where my help was needed, what was not in the right place, and what should be fixed. This is a skill that every AEGEEan who organised a local or international event surely developed!

Sometimes we do not recognise sufficiently our experience as volunteers. It is important at times to stop and reflect about what we learned in AEGEE and how we can apply it in other fields. I am sure that if you do this exercise, you would be surprised by how many valuable skills you developed! It is then important to present them in a confident manner: volunteering experience is not less than professional experience! To the contrary, it shows that you are a proactive and engaged person and that you can commit to a project and stay motivated on a long-term basis.

Alperen Yavuz, an AEGEE Alumnus

When I first joined AEGEE a decade ago, I never realized it would have changed my direction of career. I was studying Electronics Engineering at a Technical University and probably would turn into being a Research & Development kind of person. But as I learned to be a person who wants to change something and turn it into a reality, I started to look for what else I could do.

Sometimes we do not realize the value of having so many people around us from so many countries & backgrounds. When you start your working life, you realize that communication and teamwork skills are extremely valued. And these skills don’t come easy! When I first started my Consulting career, I realized that there were many different people from different countries, but I could bond with them and work with them quite easily. Well as you can guess, this is very normal for an AEGEEan, as it is our daily life. But what we are forgetting to understand is not everyone has this kind of opportunity before their professional career. My teammates and my clients always thanked me for my way of approaching them, without realizing that I developed this in AEGEE.

These meetings or conferences we are having during our time here, or the workshops we are giving are extremely useful as well. It was my second month at work and I had to lead a very important meeting with a client, because both of my supervisors got food-poisoning (!) I was very comfortable to lead the meeting making everybody surprised (myself included), as we don’t know but we do keep working on these muscles in our daily life in AEGEE.

And for last, let’s not forget about all those events, projects, workshops and much more stuff that we are organizing here. We are learning to start something from zero and make it real, which is something you call a Project Lifecycle at work! And starting this from an early age, and when they don’t expect much from you when you start your first job shocks them. In a shorter or longer run, you have a lot more advantage than you realize!

Never underestimate what you do in AEGEE: what you learn here can help you discover new strengths in your personality, hone your skills and boost your career! Let us inspire you. In cooperation with the Youth Development Working Group, the AEGEEan launches a series of career stories which all started thanks to the invaluable experience gained by being active in AEGEE. This week, Marije Arentze presents herself.

Marije Arentze, AEGEE-Leiden

After my active years in AEGEE and during my graduation phase, I started working at a young Dutch start-up called DROG, a platform that aims to build resistance against fake news and disinformation through research, consultancy, campaigning and education. I was asked to join because of my experience with giving workshops (which I gained in AEGEE), my network among European civil society (which I have because of my work in AEGEE) and my experience with project management (which I gained in AEGEE). When I joined, DROG was very small. There was no team structure, no thought-out business model. There was a loose group of people trying to work together, but neither had substantial experience with (virtual) teamwork. But there was a lot of potential: we were working together with the University of Cambridge on a research project, we were regularly invited to EU institutions in Brussels to give our view on disinformation, and the workshop we developed was very popular in high schools. That is how I started out: as a side-job next to writing my thesis, I travelled the country to deliver workshops in schools on how to build resistance in fake news

After a few months, the opportunity came along to scale up our education program by co-writing an Erasmus+ project proposal. I took almost a month off of writing my thesis and devoted a lot of time to this: we wrote a 90+ page proposal, plus a detailed budget. I asked help from some AEGEE friends, got two partners on board through my AEGEE network (one of which is  AEGEE-Europe itself), and drew upon my vast experience of the EU institutions and the youth lobby to write up a convincing proposal to develop a new education method to counter disinformation. In September, we learned that we got the grant, which meant I had secured a job for myself for two years to come. You can only imagine how awesome that felt.

In the meantime, I had proven my value for the team and the company in several ways:
– I could standardise and professionalise our workshop, turning a nice idea into a saleable product;
– My experience in project management and dealing with partners made projects run smoothly and efficiently;
– I could help my colleague navigate the “Brussels Bubble”, or take his place speaking in panels because I knew it from inside out;

… and there are probably numerous other examples that I won’t even be able to point out.

Apart from that, AEGEE helped me on a personal level:

• My experience with building projects, like I did in AEGEE’s Election Observation Project, helped me overcome the disappointments, miscommunications and loss of motivation that come with the first months of building a company. Because obviously, starting a company will be a huge, frustrating mess sometimes, just like AEGEE-projects can be.
• AEGEE taught me to be flexible in working with teams, which helped me find the joy in chaos.
• Most importantly, AEGEE taught me the importance of working for a cause I believe in. I have always been a fierce idealist, but this wasn’t always socially accepted when I was growing up. AEGEE helped solidify it, and now it is my biggest source of motivation.

It has been six months since I graduated, and I can truly say that I love my job. I get to travel a lot, mostly to Brussels, which is always lovely, because I still have a parallel AEGEE social life there. Or to Eastern Europe, which is my favourite part of the world. I get to make a difference in topics that are important to me and to society, and which are very relevant to my education (I studied East-European studies). I get to practice my teaching and public speaking skills on conferences all over the continent and get to be an expert in a newly developing field, all the while feeding my urge to make a difference in the world we live in. And I can say with 100% certainty that if it weren’t for AEGEE, I would not have stood here right now.

As you can see from my story, I did not “enter the job market” as such, since I never applied for a job after graduation, so I won’t be able to give you any tips on how to handle your first job interview. I created my own job, and I managed to this because I found a way to capitalise on everything I learned and gained during my active AEGEE years. That might sound privileged, but I promise it is not that far out of reach for you. In that regard, there is one important piece of advice I would like to give to AEGEE-members.

Above I wrote that I managed to capitalise on everything I learned and gained in AEGEE. It took me a while before I was able to do that, and this had a lot to do with how I valued myself as a volunteer. My turning point came when I changed from a “volunteer” mindset to a professional mindset: at some point, I had the epiphany that all these things I did in my active AEGEE years, just because I enjoyed them or because they were important to me, were actually valuable for a new company. As in: they were worth money. It took a change of mindset, and a lot of awkwardness in the beginning, before I was able to work with that: at first I felt embarrassed to ask for money for delivering a workshop, because I had always done that for free, until a friend told me, and very rightly so, that this is simply how the world works.

The one tip that I want to give to AEGEE-members: learn to value your work as a volunteer. The outer world, or the “job market” as you will, is still very much focused on traditional, intra-curricular education, valuing grades over volunteering positions. Your parents might not understand a thing of what you are doing in your local or on a European level. You might not have the slightest clue right now of how your AEGEE work might ever help you get a job. Your teachers, your non-AEGEE friends, your family… none of them might ever give you the validation you deserve for your volunteering. So, create your own validation. Write down what you have learned every time you come back from an AEGEE event or when you worked on a project. Define what makes you stand out from your peers who don’t have the same experience. Create a narrative. In a few years, when the time comes to apply for jobs, you will be able to explain and justify why your experience makes you valuable and unique. Dare to take some risks, to start something from scratch, to take a plunge in the deep. Remember to keep doing things that give you joy, because that will make you all the more convincing.

Mental health awareness is one of the YDWG’s objectives for 2018/19

When it comes to physical health, everybody seems to be concerned about it and tries to live an acceptable lifestyle. Nevertheless, the mental aspect happens to be quite forgotten.  We had a talk with Desireé Van Langen (member of the Youth Development Working Group), and Sara Þöll (member of OBESSU), to take a deeper look into the importance of mental health, and how these young organizations are trying to contribute towards improving the youngsters’ situation.

Raising awareness on dealing with mental health issues was established as one of the YDWG’s priorities during the Yerevan’s EPM of 2018, since stress and burnout have become a global epidemic affecting up to 25 percent of students and professionals. In order to accomplish this purpose, the focus group has set up a Mental Health Taskforce in which they work on materials and sessions about burn-out, stigma  reduction, promotion of self-care and positive mental health, and laughing workshops.

For the moment, only AEGEE-Tbilisi (Georgia) has given a Mental Health Awareness Workshop, and the participants said that they were  inspired and motivated. The YDWG plans on organizing at least 50 activities in approximately 30 antennae, everything oriented to promote positive mental health and provide wider resources of information. One of these sources is the Informational Handbook For The Promotion of Positive Mental Health, a free guide written by Georgian psychologists Maia Khositashvili and Tamar Jananashvili, that will be published online on the YDWG’s social media webpages. Regarding their accounts, February is their Youth Development Action Month, so they have a Facebook event with daily posts that includes relax challenges.

It is also noteworthy that AEGEE was one of the organizations signing OBESSU’s project Mind our education, a campaign that demands an adequate environment to fully access education which begins with the appropriate psychological support. According to their survey conducted among their members, around 66,7 percent of students confessed that school environment is highly stressful, and therefore this can lead to poor day-to-day and formation conditions. Taking into account that OBESSU is an organization that fights for students’ rights, this topic defined one of their aims for 2018 and was registered in their policy paper. They also participated in the mental health panel organized by Mental Health Europe, and are working on spreading their word throughout Europe which stands as proof of the increasing importance that youth working groups are giving to this topic.

All in all, remember, mental health is the base to a happy life. If you are struggling with mental health issues, know someone who is suffering from this, or just want to enlarge your knowledge, you should follow the YDWG accounts.But most importantly, don’t be ashamed of seeking  help from professionals and those who love you.

In the occasion of the Youth Development month, the Youth Development Working Group reached out to four AEGEE alumni and interviewed them, with the intention to connect past, present and future of AEGEE. Here’s the fourth and last interview of the series: Maria Nomikou (formerly) from AEGEE-Athina and AEGEE-Zaragoza. 

YDWG: Hello Maria, can you introduce yourself a bit?

Maria: I am Maria, I have studied theatre studies, stage management and international and European policies in education training and research and I joined AEGEE in 2002. Since then I have spent a lot of my time travelling for AEGEE, for pleasure or for delivering training courses. At the moment, I work at the British Council in the field of education, society and social economy. I love sewing, cooking and cinema. [she smiles, ed.]

And when did you become a member of AEGEE? How many years did you volunteer in it and what have you done during those years?

I joined AEGEE in 2002 and I was very active until 2009, but somehow I stayed involved as the last training I delivered for AEGEE was in 2013. Well, last year I facilitated the team building for the CD but it was just for a couple of days. What I have done… Member of AEGEE-Athina and AEGEE-Zaragoza, one year in the board of AEGEE-Athina, speaker of the Academy twice, president of the Members Commission (i think this doesn’t exist anymore [she smiles, ed.]), trainer in more than 15 European Schools, ES2 Oviedo Manager and chief editor of the NFE book: the impact of non-formal education on young people and society.

What does AEGEE mean for you?

Travelling like an executive, working in the middle of the night like in a multinational company, partying like an animal, having a friend in every single corner of Europe, thinking of the past and smiling for all the wonderful crazy experiences AEGEE gave me.

What was the biggest thing that AEGEE brought to you?

Confidence, the feeling that you have the power to make your dreams come true.

Which skills did you improve most during your very active years in AEGEE?

I feel that my whole personality was influenced by AEGEE. In my seven most active years in AEGEE I spent endless hours working for the organisation and I travelled to numerous places. This influences not only your skills and knowledge but your attitude towards life.

Did these skills help you to find a job easily? And what is your job now?

AEGEE first of all gave me a great opportunity to discover the world of youth work and youth training. Being nominated to the European Youth Forum Pool of Trainers for three mandates (2007-2013) I had the opportunity to work in very exciting projects with big institutions and NGOs. This influenced my future a lot and what I do now is as if I followed a natural path that started with AEGEE, continued with the Forum and other companies/experiences and brought me where I am, at the British Council in Athens.

What would you say is the biggest benefit of AEGEE for young people looking for a job?

It doesn’t matter what your job will be in five, 10 or 20 years, the biggest benefit is that it makes you feel a citizen of the world. It helps you improve basic soft skills such as collaboration, organisation, sense of responsibility, intercultural skills and many more that are useful for any job, even for the ones that maybe don’t exist yet. What you need to keep in mind is that this is not something that AEGEE offers you, but something you offer yourself, with AEGEE being just the vehicle.

Do you have any advice for newbies in AEGEE?

Grab the opportunities, try hard, follow your dreams and try to find out what makes you unique. AEGEE is a great and safe place to try new things, explore your strengths and weaknesses and find other crazy people that will join you in crazy journeys.

This is the fourth and last article of a series. You can find the first here, the second here and the third here. 

Written by Batuhan Çarıkçı, Youth Development Working Group

In the occasion of the Youth Development month, the Youth Development Working Group reached out to four AEGEE alumni and interviewed them, with the intention to connect past, present and future of AEGEE. Here’s the third interview of the series: Fabian Brüggeman (formerly) from AEGEE-Düsseldorf. 

YDWG: Hello Fabian, can you introduce yourself a bit?

Fabian: Sure! I’m living in Cologne in a very nice house with five and a half flatmates (one of them is a small kid) and a cat, with a garden and a pool. The perfect place to live and relax! I am working at the university – doing project management – but I reduced my working hours in order to have more time for my own business: I am running a training company called Improve yourself, where I help my participants to improve their softskills, mostly by the means of methods of improvisational theatre, which is a lot of fun! I played improv for quite some years, but now I am rather giving classes in improv in my leisure time.

And when did you become a member of AEGEE? How many years did you volunteer in it and what have you done during those years?

I became member of AEGEE in December 2004. Actually, I just wanted to be president of the local team which took care of the Erasmus students, but I was told I “had to be in the board of AEGEE” to do so. So I thought “Whatever, just join!”. And that’s how it started. I went to my first Agora in Izmir in 2005, met great people, re-founded AEGEE Düsseldorf in 2009… In 2010 I wanted to quit. I was working back then already, and I thought it was time to let go. But I was asked to help out “one last time” for the European Ideas Factory in Gliwice. And somehow the spirit came back (maybe meeting a nice girl helped as well [he winks, ed.]). That was the time I started giving trainings in AEGEE, teaching what I had learned before being a participant in improv classes. And somehow my participants loved it! I called that workshop “Improve yourself” and at some Agoras I had to give it twice because so many people wanted to join. Since I also became a systemic coach, I joined the MemCom and one term later was elected speaker. Back then, I enjoyed giving team building trainings, also for CDs, like the one for CD just after the vote of confidence back in 2012 in Enschede. During that time, together with Katja Berendt, I made a proposal to change the MemCom into the MedCom, to make sure it can be much more helpful and step in at an earlier time. I was their president from 2012-13. My active time ended back then, but here and there I am still asked to contribute, like for example taking care of teambuilding for the current CD back in August.

What does AEGEE mean for you?

AEGEE is a playground, where its members share the same values. And with playground I mean the space to make mistakes and learn from them, improving and growing. A lot of people are annoyed that AEGEE tries to reinvent the wheel each couple of years. I disagree with them – I think it’s amazing, because that means all those people in the CD, commissions, projects… they are able to do the same mistakes and learn from them big times!

What was the biggest thing that AEGEE brought to you?

The space to grow and learn to become a trainer. At this very moment, writing the answers, I am sitting in a train going back home, because I gave a teambuilding training to a company in southern Germany. This would not have happened without AEGEE!

Which skills did you improve most during your very active years in AEGEE?

Communication, understanding (cultural) differences in people and value them, how to handle big egos without fighting against them, liking people and team work.

Did these skills help you to find a job easily?

Absolutely! I started working at a huge international IT-consulting company after my studies, and half of the time of my job interview was about AEGEE and the experiences I had in AEGEE, working in international teams. They were really curious about it!

What would you say is the biggest benefit of AEGEE for young people looking for a job? Do you have any advice for newbies in AEGEE?

I think the biggest benefit is that young people can make experiences that are valuable for future employees. Intercultural competences, communication, team work… which you can mention and stress in job interviews. Don’t just do it for your CV, but do it for yourself. If you have an intrinsic motivation, go for it, as long it’s aligned with the values of AEGEE it will be a win-win situation. You need to shape your “AEGEE-path” yourself, go and create it.

This is the third article of a series of four. You can find the first here and the second here. 

Written by Batuhan Çarıkçı, Youth Development Working Group

In the occasion of the Youth Development month, the Youth Development Working Group reached out to four AEGEE alumni and interviewed them, with the intention to connect past, present and future of AEGEE. Here’s the second interview of the series: Simon de Hartog (formerly) from AEGEE-Enschede. 

YDWG: Hello Simon, can you introduce yourself a bit?

Simon: Currently I am working at my own company as a software architect. Next to that I occasionally teach classes for both private and corporate people, ranging from personal development to IT. I unsubscribed from Holland last year in November, since I don’t have a house or a fixed place where I live.

People that go on holidays and have pets to take care of can find me on various sites. I travel from house to house every two weeks to two months, taking care of it and the pets there. My stuff fits in two suitcases in the back of my car, it’s great to be able to travel light. Every place I go, I need about a day to find supermarkets, natural places to visit and to set up my laptop and screens.

Some ask me: “But what about friends?”. The funny thing is that I noticed I actually visit more friends than I used to. I guess this is because I travel around the countries a lot more, so it’s easier to stop by friends when I am nearby.

And when did you become a member of AEGEE? How many years did you volunteer in it and what have you done during those years?

I joined AEGEE-Enschede in January 1999. A friend of mine who was in the board at that time asked me to set up the office network and server. After I did that, I thought “I might as well join the Association”. A step I have never regretted!

At first, I joined a local committee to maintain the ICT, because that’s what I was good at. The committee grew to four people, I became the chairman. I started visiting the AEGEE pub called Asterion and I met new and interesting people. They took me hitchhiking to Utrecht, Poland and beyond. My first AEGEE experience was at Agora Utrecht: all those nationalities in a single room, and we were all members of the same group of students! Awesome!

Then I started travelling more, joined statutory events and conferences, European Schools and more. Teaching classes at various IT European Schools was becoming a habit. Together with fellow nerds, we revived the IUG (Internet User Group) into the IT Working Group at Agora Udine.

Various trips to the headoffice followed, arranging the IT there, joining lots of parties and meeting new AEGEEans all the time. The statutory events became more and more dependent on IT, so together with support from various other members, an IT-responsible was appointed for statutory events just after I more or less resigned from the position. [he smiles, ed.]

What does AEGEE mean for you?

For me, AEGEE represents what it stands for: an organisation of European students spread across various countries. It is the best thing that happened to me during my studies at university. I learnt a lot about myself, others, cultures, travelling and broadened my view of the world. It provided me with a vast network of good friends and also business relations. Before I joined, I always thought of Poland as a country left of former Russia. Now, it’s only the country next to Germany, a lot closer!

What was the biggest thing that AEGEE brought to you?

Trying to put a measure on all the things AEGEE has given me is not possible for me, let alone ranking them! In general, I believe AEGEE brings three things to any member, each of course in varying degrees: personal development, fun, travelling and cultural experience.

I’ve been lucky to be able to say I received all three. It greatly improved my social skills, because they were lacking behind when I started university. I’ve also learned a lot about management, organising events, how to deal with various types of organisations and getting comfortable wearing a suit. [he smiles, ed.]

The fun part hardly needs explanation. Parties, inspiring (or sometimes not so inspiring) workshops, organisation of statutory meetings, visiting beautiful places, meeting beautiful people, and last but not least, getting a glimpse of what goes on behind the chairtable!

Which skills did you improve the most during your very active years in AEGEE?

How to make contact with people in a good way, getting insights on how different cultures work and think, especially when interacting. I learnt how to do business, organise events, have effective meetings and why most meetings I have now are not so productive… Giving workshops, putting together training materials, confronting people in a constructive way, oral presentations… I can go on for a long time.

I guess if people wonder what they will get out of joining AEGEE, it’s almost impossible to get an answer. I had a similar issue when I was about to join the board of AEGEE-Enschede. “What will it bring me?” I asked myself and others a lot of times. I did not get a satisfying answer, at least not one justifying giving up more than one year of studies (which is not the case anymore these days, don’t worry [he smiles, ed.]).

In the end, I came to the conclusion that I could not rationalise my decision to join or not. So I decided to go for it, just because it seemed like a wonderful challenge. And it was! To this day, I’m still happy I chose to join the board.

Did these skills help you to find a job easily? And what is your job now?

Certainly! The skills helped my to find a job I love. I quit my job a few years ago and decided to start living off my own company (which I already had for a few years). It worked out great, hopefully I will never have to be an employee again. [he winks, ed.]

I develop software architectures and also partly build them for large and small companies. One thing I also learned in AEGEE is that IT should not be a goal; it is still a mean to make an organisation operate more efficiently. This means IT projects are a success or failure solely based on the adoption rate of the organisation’s employees or participants. Many IT companies these days are no competition for me at all because they don’t understand this seemingly simple rule. Thanks again to AEGEE!

What would you say is the biggest benefit of AEGEE for young people looking for a job?

Difficult to give one biggest benefit that is valid for every combination of persons and jobs. The one I am still profiting from is my network of business relations I got from AEGEE and also the fact that I learned how to maintain and expand it.

Lastly, do you have any advice for newbies in AEGEE?

When I look back to my years in AEGEE, I have little regrets. However, if you are a new member or thinking of becoming one, please enjoy your membership! Enjoy what AEGEE has to offer you in all its aspects. Experiment, play, don’t take everything too seriously all the time. AEGEE can be a safe haven to learn how to conduct business and interact with all kinds of people in real life. Of course there are people, money and time at stake. But, you learn a lot more from mistakes then from successes. Perhaps this advice could also apply to life after AEGEE?

This is the second article of a series of four. You can find the first one here. 

Written by Batuhan Çarıkçı, Youth Development Working Group

In the occasion of the Youth Development month, the Youth Development Working Group reached out to four AEGEE alumni and interviewed them, with the intention to connect past, present and future of AEGEE. Here’s the first interview of the series: Berat Ezel (formerly) from AEGEE-Izmir.

YDWG: Hello Berat, can you introduce yourself a bit?

Berat: I am a volunteer, youth worker and consultant on training design solutions and recently I have been working with Syrian refugees and professionals who work with disadvantaged target groups in the frame of social inclusion. Apart from these fields, I am actively working on outdoor education, entrepreneurship trainings for youngsters and women entrepreneurs living in rural areas. I live in Bodrum,Turkey.

And when did you become a member of AEGEE? How many years did you volunteer in it and what have you done during those years?

Well, I became a member of AEGEE-Izmir in 2000. I was actively involved in local and European activities until 2008. Since then I have been supporting AEGEE locals or members as alumni member. When I was an active member of AEGEE, I had many roles in the Network. I was a board member of AEGEE-Academy, SUCT, DWG, Network Commission at the European level and I was a board member of AEGEE-Izmir, organising committee member of AGORA Izmir 2005, which was awarded “best event” and I was organiser of several Summer Universities.

What does AEGEE mean for you?

AEGEE means a big network and family which can broaden your life vision and give you many opportunities, more than a young person can ever imagine.

What was the biggest thing that AEGEE brought to you?

Obviously the reason of choosing my current job career and my lifelong friends from Turkey and all over Europe. Before being a member of AEGEE, I was involved in volunteering activities but I was feeling that something was missing. Then, after meeting different people from different backgrounds from all over Europe, I realised that youth’s needs and problems are not so different in different countries. And this network motivated me to step up to extend my competences in order to be more active as citizen. On the other hand, while organising social projects and activities for youngsters, I had the chance to meet amazing people who are willing to make a positive impact in society. Some of them are my close friends and some are my colleagues now. We have a strong connection thanks to the AEGEE spirit.

Which skills did you improve most during your very active years in AEGEE?

Well not only skills, but I would rather say I had the chance to develop knowledge and attitudes in my job and life too. First of all, I had the chance to explore civil society and its power for a change in the community. Intercultural learning, conflict resolution, active citizenship, volunteering, human rights and advocacy, and designing learning activities (LTCs, European Schools) are only some of the fields I got knowledge of. Surely event management, project management, FR and PR skills, how to run an NGO, how to manage volunteers and many other skills helped me to build my career. Working in the right field, with the right target group and with the right team helped me to develop my attitude towards my job. Sharing information and gaining knowledge became the vision of my life.

Did these skills help you to find a job easily? And what is your job now?

It was NOT so easy at the beginning. Including my friends and family, nobody ever believed that I could have a good future or good life by choosing social work. When I was travelling in Europe from one event to another, they mostly thought that I was just partying and enjoying life and that’s it. Obviously, recognition of youth work at the beginning of the 2000s was not so developed as much as today. So it was not so easy to find a job to work on. On the other hand, thanks to my social and organisational skills, I had the chance to work on large scale projects of national and international foundations and institutions and this helped me to start working as freelance youth trainer. I still am a trainers’ pool member of different European youth networks. But I work as project manager in an youth and culture centre in Bodrum, Turkey.

What would you say is the biggest benefit of AEGEE for young people looking for a job?

The biggest advantage of AEGEE for a youngster is being a member of huge network/family full of opportunities. Each youngster has skills and motivation, desires but mostly they think they are alone. For a young person, playing a violin in Izmir is nice, but if you tell him/her “there is an opportunity to meet different people who play different instruments from Madrid, Athens, Krakow, Baku, Budapest, Prague, Zagreb” and he/she can come together, meet, understand each other, work together, organise a concert together with those people and invite a whole European community to that, and if you tell him/her that it is not only a music performance but promotion of solidarity, unity and a better future for new generations with no prejudices through this event, then I am sure that youngster would say “It is impossible!”. Well, it is possible..I’ve seen it with AEGEE.

Lastly, do you have any advices for the newbies in AEGEE?

I don’t know if it is advice, but I would say I am very sorry for them. Because if they are already a newbie, that means they are already infected by the AEGEE virus. It will be following them entirely. [he smiles, ed.] AEGEE is like a simulation of life, both professionally and socially, and it is also life itself. So they should enjoy it and use it and gain from it. But they shouldn’t forget to give back to AEGEE as well.

Written by Batuhan Çarıkçı, Youth Development Working Group