YFJ, UNDP or BEST: you have heard of these organisations but don’t really know what they stand for or you wonder what they have in common? They all cooperate closely with AEGEE and are only a few of AEGEE´s external partners. AEGEE has many European Bodies and among them is the Liaison Office. At the moment there are 13 Liaison Officers in total representing AEGEE towards various international organisations. Their task is to maintain a close link by communicating regularly, creating new ideas for a cooperation, and by actively contributing to promoting AEGEE externally.

Since October last year I am Liaison Officer towards the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and I learnt more about the organisation, how it works, and what they actually do. The OSCE is the world’s largest security organisation and works on a broad spectrum of topics, such as international security, democratisation, transparency, human rights and fair elections. 57 countries from Europe, North America and northern as well as central Asia participate in the organisation. The OSCE’s commitment to promote the inclusion of youth in its peace and security agenda always played a crucial role in its work. Therefore, the OSCE is an important partner and gives us a platform to promote youth rights and youth participation, since it acknowledges the potential of young people to contribute to political, economic and social development and puts an emphasis on youth protection as well as on promoting youth participation in areas such as intercultural and interreligious dialogue, education, tolerance and non-discrimination and political participation.

While the description of the Liaison Officers’ work above seems quite broad, you might wonder what we do exactly. In order to keep in contact with the OSCE, I mostly write e-mails with our contact person to find out about events, interesting cooperation ideas, or what else is going on. After I have received new information, my tasks include informing AEGEEans about the work of the organisation and possibilities they can get involved in, e.g. interesting events for members or possible cooperations between locals or European Bodies and the OSCE, coordinating my actions with the CD, and getting involved.

Over the months many different opportunities occur for AEGEEans all over Europe, such as the Human Dimension Implementation Meeting (HDIM) that the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) organises every autumn. The HDIM is Europe’s largest human rights conference with civil society representatives, government officials and human rights activists. The HDIM is taking place in September this year and AEGEE is sending a small delegation to take part at the event from the 12th to the 14th of September. During the HDIM you will take part at various workshops on fundamental freedoms, democracy and democratic elections, equal participation in public and political life, and on tolerance and non-discrimination. So, during these sessions you will learn more about human rights issues and methods used by the governments, international organisations, or civil society groups to tackle them. Besides, you will have the chance to talk to official representatives from various nations, take part to a one-on-one meeting between AEGEE and OSCE representatives, and visit the beautiful city of Warsaw.

You still have the chance to join us at the HDIM. So if you are interested, you can find out more here: http://www.osce.org/odihr/hdim_2017 or just apply until the 3rd of September via this link: https://goo.gl/forms/gHO2HP2KyKepRTvh2.

Theresa Leppert, AEGEE-Passau and Liaison Officer towards the OSCE

Pablo Hernández joined AEGEE-Alicante in 2010 due to his wish to travel abroad. The year prior to that, he traveled to Iceland for a big event being organised in the North and from that moment he realized how amazing it is to share experiences with people from different cultures. His first Summer University was in Leiden 2010 and today he can call himself policy officer on Youth Participation.

The AEGEEan interviewed Pablo about his time in AEGEE so far in which he has been president of his antenna AEGEE-Alicante and very active on the European Level of AEGEE as well.

The AEGEEan: What have you been doing in AEGEE?

Pablo: It took me more than one year to get active in AEGEE, but from that moment I have not stopped. I became a board member only three months after meeting my local. I took important responsibilities assisting the secretariat. After the Spring Agora Alicante 2011, there were experienced people who made it easier in these first steps. The following year, I became president of AEGEE-Alicante and I also took active part in the organisation of some events such as the 10th Anniversary of the antenna, Tabarca’s diving event or the Summer University.

At the European level, I have been member of the Education Working Group (EWG) and the Europe in Exchange (EiE) project where I am coordinator of an action. I will be also collaborating with AEGEE-Thessaloniki this year taking advantage that I have moved there!

Why did you apply to become Policy officer on Youth Participation?

One of the most important topics in AEGEE is to develop an active citizenship and encouraging people to take part in the social live, including political affairs. I believe that we have to fight for an improvement of the current situation and react against the actions taken to limit these rights. I am really motivated and aware of the situation so I want to contribute to the improvement of this aspects.

So what will you be doing as a Policy officer on this topic?

As Policy officer, I want to continue reinforcing and implementing the work done by former Policy Officer Felipe González Santos. If we work in the same direction, we will be able to go deeper and obtain better outcomes. This will allow us to have a stronger position in the different discussions that will take place concerning Youth Participation topics. As a policy officer I want also to let the Network know what is our work, why we are important for them and that we work for the interest of every member, so I will try to spread results, get closer to each hot situation and be the bridge between youth participation problems from the members/locals and the political position of AEGEE-Europe.

What do you do when you are not working on AEGEE matters?

Now I am doing my Erasmus in Greece and I try to take advantage of every second of this great chance. I like going out with friends to a café and spend 2-3 hours following the “χαλαρά” spirit (“take it easy” in Greek). About my studies, I am about to graduate law, so I will be studying hard and I will combine it with Greek language lectures.

You have been part of the Education Working Group for a while also. What makes you interested in this particular topic?

I believe that education is the key to progress. In AEGEE we are all part of the same thing, Europe, but we have very different backgrounds and cultures, so what makes us understand each other is education. This association is a great promoter of the non-formal education as we both teach and learn, break stereotypes and open people’s mind without books or strict lessons.

The Europe in Exchange (EiE) project had a little bit of a slow beginning, but is speeding up at the moment with lots of promotion. How do you see the future of the project and what is your part in it?

The first steps in the project were to build it up with solid structures. We have finished this phase and now it is the time to implement our actions. We need a strong collaboration from members and antennae, so I encourage everybody to come and contact us.

In EiE I am responsible for the coordination of an action that strives to increase the exchange agreements among universities, as AEGEE is a good platform to put in contact two different universities.

You have been president of your antenna, AEGEE-Alicante. What did that experience give to you?

Being president in AEGEE-Alicante has been the best experience of my life. I has been a challenge from the beginning because we do many different things at the same time and the coordination sometimes is very demanding. It couldn’t be possible without the help of my mates.

I learnt about team building, distribution of roles and responsibilities, leadership and, of course, to deal with difficult situations.

There are many people active in AEGEE-Alicante, how do you motivate them in AEGEE-Alicante?

First of all, our team is not only a group of people that organize activities but it is also a group of friends. It is very easy to work in an atmosphere in which everybody is walking in the same direction.

And secondly, we engage a lot of people in organizing some events during the year. After that, usually, they get motivated and they request more, so we inform them about the different possibilities that they have within the whole AEGEE. We mostly use our website as a platform to inform people, there are always a lot of articles explaining what we do and which are our different activities. It is in Spanish, but you can have a look: www.aegeealicante.org

How do you encourage them to join the European Level?

This should be a natural thing. We provide all the information that they need and we explain a lot of different experiences about it in order to motivate them not only in local affairs but also in European activities. For a long time we have had strong representatives in the different bodies to whom the members can ask many questions.

You have been working on having collaboration between AEGEE-Alicante and ESN (Erasmus Student Network) in Alicante. Why do you think it is important for different associations to collaborate?

The relation between AEGEE-Alicante and ESN-Alicante was not good. There were strong differences. I personally met the current president of ESN-Alicante and I explained to him what we do and why a collaboration between the two of us is a positive thing and now we have some common projects.

This collaboration makes both of us stronger in the University, and we can organize a huge variety of activities such cinema forums or tandems courses.

You are currently doing your Erasmus in Thessaloniki, what made you choose Greece?

I chose Thessaloniki mainly because some time ago I went to the Summer University in Athina (2011). I can say that the event was very good, and it really made me fall in love with the Greek culture and meeting a lot of Greek people. They always want to enjoy social life, not taking so much care about money, styles or other secondary things. That is exactly what I am looking for now.

You also recently took part in the Network Meeting (NWM) Thessaloniki, what was that experience like?

It was the first event they organised in a long time and it was a complete success. The trainers did a great job. The idea was planting the seed for the development of these antennae and starting to work. Now they have a better communication systems and also a more solid structure. There is a lot of work to do here, but if they keep on this line, they will improve soon.

You will also take part in NWM Eskesehir, what is it that you like about taking part in NWMs?

I want to take advantage of living close to Turkey (10 hours by bus to Istanbul). To see and to meet the people who are running the Turkish antennae and to know what they are working on. Sometimes we only focus in the organisation of locals near us and it will be a great opportunity to break this wall and see other working formats.

Wrtiten by Patricia Anthony, AEGEE-København

After finishing the survey on Youth Participation we know that many of you are looking forward to the answers. The results are very motivating for us and also draw a clear line on the path AEGEE members want to take regarding Youth Participation. Interested? Then continue reading.

Youth Participation is one of the three focus areas chosen for the period of  2011-2014 and therefore a wide range of activities are organised throughout our network on this topic. However, the survey launched by the Policy Officer on Youth Participation, Felipe González Santos, has shown that the interest on this topic is rooted in the network.

To the question whether youth participation was relevant to the work of our organisation, in a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is not important at all and 10 extremely important, the average rate given is 8.85 and 40% of the answers are 10. Also, when asking about the most important stakeholders working on the field of youth participation, the most repeated one by our members is, in fact, AEGEE. This is a clear message stating that youth participation should be, as it has been for several years already, a priority for the organisation and we should put even more efforts into it. Furthermore, we think that we have expertise on the field, so we should definitely make use of it.

Before starting going into the details, let’s see what our members understand by ‘Youth Participation’ The most repeated answer, somehow general and related, is that Youth Participation is taking part in society in an active way. Then the second most repeated answer relates Youth Participation with being organised to tackle a concrete problem. This organization can be through youth and students associations or just a group of people that has decided to cooperate to develop initiatives that have a positive impact in the community. The last position in the TOP 3 answers links youth participation with raising our voice in politics. Here people refer both to debating about the current issues and to advocating for improving young people’s life through politics. You can be sure that we will take your opinions into account and therefore promote even more initiatives among AEGEE members and also be more present in the political arena fighting for solving the problems that affect youth the most nowadays and working on a better future for young people.

If we continue deepening into the survey, to the question about main obstacles to the participation of young people in the society, the most common answers are that young people lack interest in taking initiatives (individualistic behaviours), lack information, lack a clear impact of initiatives developed by youth organizations and young people and lack trust in democratic institutions. The first two obstacles are very much connected, not having access to youth-friendly information about how to take part in social activities in one’s community or how to be more involved in decisions making and the democratic process is very discouraging, reducing the amount of attention paid to these issues. It is also a fact that when somebody can have access to information on possibilities to volunteer and meets other people already taking part in different programmes supported by institutions or initiatives independently organised by citizens, this person will be more interested in this kind of activities. The lack of trust in democratic institutions can also be a consequence of the lack of easy accessible information, as we cannot have confidence in something that is hidden or we do not know much about. Regarding the lack of clear impact of our actions, there are clearly many things to develop here and I am happy to know that the current Comité Directeur is working hard in the part of impact measurement of AEGEE projects.

Those are definitely challenges that we, as youth organisation working in the field of citizenship and participation, need to rise to.

As for the main topics in which AEGEE should develop a position, AEGEEans think that we should centre our work on the recognition of volunteering, within the university curricula as well as in European and national laws. Another important topic highlighted by AEGEE members is tackling the problem of low youth participation in the democratic process, not only in the elections but also in policy and decision making. Another important concern for the association is the difficulties that non-EU citizens face every time they try to come to the EU to volunteer, visa procedure should be easier and cheaper (if not fully free) and we will work on advocating for that too.

Very soon we will prepare another survey to start developing AEGEE’s positions on this topics before the consultation event that will take place in Maribor in April.

If you would like to be further informed about AEGEE’s work on the field of Youth Participation of be involved in it, please contact Felipe Gonzalez at felipe.gonzalez@aegee.org.

Written by Policy Officer on Youth Participation Felipe González Santos (@Felipe_AEGEE)

Idaho might remind the geography brains about some place in the United States of America, but it is obviously not the Idaho that the Sports Working Group (SWG) will bring to AEGEE.

Lately, the SWG has been working with two policy officers on two different, but yet a bit similar subjects; organising events combating homophobia and racism in AEGEE. Recently, the SWG were the leaders in the project and Skype meeting with the aim of gathering the Human Rights Working Group (HRWG), SWG members and Policy officer E.G. The topic of the meeting and project is to create an easy concept that antennae all across the AEGEE Network can adapt to and organise events in connection with the international day against homophobia which takes place yearly on May 17^th. The day is also referred as IDAHO, and after a fruitful Skype meeting the possibilities to create a lot of awareness about a great cause and at the same time make AEGEE reach beyond where it has reached before are looking very good.

Are you yellow, blue or violet?

“What rainbow color are you?” was the question recently on the SWG Facebook page which made has created confusion amongst many people, but it is linked to the IDAHO campaign. A campaign that the SWG will continue working on together with Eline with the aim of getting as many antennae across Europe to join the rainbow flash mobs dancing and raising awareness about the fight against homophobia together with other national movements. This way youth participation and inclusion of minorities are both involved in the event.

Dancing is a sports activity that is easy to organise and furthermore sport is considered a universal language that brings people together. The aim with our involvement in IDAHO is to create awareness about the fight against homophobia and raise the interest in AEGEE and beyond, hopefully raising an even greater interest in organising many more events against homophobia in AEGEE both in and outside of the SWG after May 17^th as well.

As mentioned, the SWG will continue the work together with the HRWG and Eline on the topic in order to specify the project even more. However, any member with an idea about how AEGEE can become visible in the flash mobs is more than welcome to contact the SWG.

Combating racism as well

The policy officers have before been introduced in The AEGEEan, but it can still be a confusing reading about what exactly the policy officers are doing, so while in contact with policy officer Stephanie Müller, the SWG had the time to ask a few questions about her work so far.

SWG:  What have you been working on as a policy officer so far?

Stephanie: The topic I work on is “Racism and Xenophobia”, so far I have collected information on the topic, about its relevance for Europe and how racism & xenophobia is experienced in different countries in Europe. Therefore, at the beginning of December I send a questionnaire to the Network and got very interesting answers, which I will share with the Network soon.

It is very sad to see in how many European countries nationalists are raising and turning against foreigners, mostly immigrants from Africa and the Middle East. Particularly, in Southern European countries strong national and sometimes racist parties are raising and gaining more and more supporters.

SWG: What are your upcoming projects as a policy officer?

Stephanie: Like the other Policy Officers I will write a position paper against racism and xenophobia, for which I like to involve the Network as much as possible. I hope the Skype meeting about the international day against racism is just the beginning. I hope to be able to motive some locals to organise some events which are raising awareness of the fact that many people in Europe are discriminated because of their country of birth, religion, nationality or appearance. This is a very important topic we should not close our eyes to. Furthermore, I hope to raise the topic during the Agora Rhein-Neckar in a progress meeting and talk to some people of what could come next.

The Skype meeting that Stephanie is talking about is a project between the SWG and Stephanie aiming to gather AEGEE members and ask the question “What would you do in the International Day United against Racism?” If you want to join the discussion, then contact the SWG.

Written by Patricia Anthony, AEGEE-København

Fall Agora Budapest 2012 was the Agora of going back to the past. Returning to the exact location of the first Agora in Eastern Europe as we are dealing once again with resistance to European ideals. Debating on our identity in order to better understand ourselves. Launching new initiatives which will help AEGEE reclaim the prominent, strongly thematic place it once held in the European society. New ideas, new initiatives, new positions—for example the newly elected Policy Officers of AEGEE-Europe. At a progress meeting on Saturday afternoon, they presented themselves and their thematic fields to participants.

With six they are, working on four thematic fields: Youth Participation (Felipe González Santos), Bridging Europe (Armenak Minasyants), Social Inclusion (Lucia Sobekova, E.G., and Stephanie Müller), and Sustainability (Mathieu Soete).

Unfortunately, not all of them were able to make it to the Agora on such a short notice—they were elected after the applications had closed—but their topics were skilfully introduced by their sparring partners from the CD. During this meeting, they presented the future steps and actions planned, and discussed with participants regarding the subtopics to be tackled.

Youth Participation

After a brief introduction to the positions of Policy Officer and a general timeline of their work, Lucille Rieux kicked off the progress meeting with the topic of Youth Participation, representing the unfortunately absent Felipe González Santos (AEGEE-A Coruña). Youth participation is so much a part of AEGEE’s daily work that we take it for granted. Therefore, it would be good to question this obviousness, and to discover what we actually mean by it. “Participation” can be very wide, and finding a common definition is not an easy task.

Moreover, Felipe defined two main topics in which he believes there is room for advocating for AEGEE’s vision: participation of young people in the decision making process—including ideas such as the age of vote, e-democracy, education on the democratic process and systems as such—and participation of young people in their community, which encompasses the question of volunteers’ rights and recognition of volunteering. Finally, one more question was raised which will be interesting to focus on: should we encourage young people to participate using new forms of participation, or rather focus on the existing tools and try to understand why and how they could actually work better.

Bridging Europe

Even though accepted for the Agora, due to the recent diplomatic breakdown between Hungary and Armenia, the Policy Officer on EU enlargement and integration Armenak Minasyants (AEGEE-Yerevan) was not able to secure a visa to enter the country, and was therefore represented by Anna Gots. Her first challenge was the definition of the policy field itself. In order to clarify his field of work to externals, Armenak considered renaming it “EU Enlargement and integration,” but how far are we prepared to go in promoting a larger and stronger EU, and its resulting changes to our lives? In order to better understand this, an online consultation and discussion was proposed, to gather the opinion of the network on this sensitive, though very important topic.

Within this field then—or as a first step towards it, perhaps—participants agreed a lot of work still remains to be done in tackling visa issues in non-EU countries—the absence of Armenak himself being a living proof of this. In order to focus on a specific topic, it was suggested to cooperate with other youth organisations, and work on shaping clear regulations for obtaining visa for youth workers and volunteers.

LGBT

Next up were the three Policy Officers working on Social Inclusion, starting with E.G. (AEGEE-Leiden). Introducing the topic of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) issues during the Policy Officers progress meeting, several potential subtopics were discussed. Leading for this discussion, as well as for the future research on LGBT issues for the Position Paper that is to be written, was the roadmap published by the European Parliament titled Towards an EU roadmap for equality on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. Identifying both problems faced by LGBTI persons, and EU actions that have and can be taken in this area, this roadmap proposes five policy themes: equality and non-discriminatory access to employment, education, health, goods and services, and housing; trans and intersex issues; diverse families and freedom of movement; hate speech, hate crime, and violence; and, lastly, fleeing homophobia and transphobia.

Having explained these themes during the meeting, homophobia turned out the be the topic AEGEE was considered most likely to work on, both in terms of changing perceptions in Central- and Eastern Europe, as well as in striving for transborder recognition of same-sex marriage. Important is to opt for a European scope, finding views that relate to AEGEEans across the entire network.

Racism and Xenophobia

The second Policy Officer on Social Inclusion, Stephanie Müller (AEGEE-Heidelberg), proposed to focus on writing a position paper against Racism and Xenophobia. AEGEE, with its 27 years of existence as a student organisation, is the best proof that everyone can overcome prejudices and xenophobia. We should therefore clearly state that racism is not acceptable. AEGEE is an organisation proud of being open to everyone who is tolerant and respects each other’s cultural differences, without prioritising one culture over the other.

It is seen with a big concern how, in this current economical crisis, radical racist parties are winning disproportionally large votes in the national parliaments of European countries.  It is time for AEGEE to express our condemnation of racism and xenophobia. The topic was accepted with positive feedback by the audience of the progress meeting, giving Stephanie plenty of motivation and support to continue her work.

Human Rights

Concluding the Social Inclusion policy field, Miguel Gallardo presented the first work of Lucia Sobekova (AEGEE-Bratislava) on the topic of Human Rights Approach, as the way to decrease social differences between European youth. Current formal education does not cover the topic of human rights deeply enough in most of the European countries, which leads to the fact that they remain a foreign topic for most of the European youth. On the other hand, non-formal education can often be the best way to learn about human rights, in an experience-based, peer-surrounded environment, leading to a more tolerant society.

Consequently, there is a wide field where only NGOs can provide information, raise awareness and create mobilisation. In this field, most of the big NGOs do a great work for the society in general, but their messages have not always reached the youth sector. The work of Lucia will therefore be to establish a bridge between human rights and the European youth.

Sustainability

Last but not least, Mathieu Soete (AEGEE-Leuven) introduced his field of Sustainability. As sustainability is the only policy field not firmly rooted in the Strategic Plan, participants first discussed about its relevance for AEGEE’s work, agreeing that in today’s world, this topic cannot be overlooked any longer.

As a first subtopic, sustainable entrepreneurship—the theme of this year’s European School on Entrepreneurship—not only creates unique opportunities for young enterprising minds with a heart for green business, but also offers sustainable solutions to people looking to start up their own non-profit organisation or youth project.  Second, more attention and support is needed for education about sustainability, which can equip current and future generations with the tools needed for a more sustainable future, and which fits within the wide reform of our educational systems, formal and non-formal. Furthermore, in order to  increase the internal possibilities, the sustainability of youth organisations was taken on board as third subtopic.

4 fields, 6 Policy Officers, and enough topics for each and every AEGEE member to find a thematic focus for the upcoming year. We are ready for it, and are looking forward to your input!

Written by Anna Gots, Armenak Minasyants, E.G., Felipe González Santos, Kathrin Renner, Lucia Sobekova, Lucille Rieux, Luis Alvarado Martínez, Mathieu Soete, Miguel Gallardo Albajar, and Stephanie Müller