{"id":27297,"date":"2014-12-18T17:35:52","date_gmt":"2014-12-18T15:35:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/?p=27297"},"modified":"2020-02-16T17:55:37","modified_gmt":"2020-02-16T16:55:37","slug":"back-to-belgium-with-a-new-contact-in-louvain-la-neuve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/2014\/12\/18\/back-to-belgium-with-a-new-contact-in-louvain-la-neuve\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to Belgium with a new Contact in Louvain-la-Neuve!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although the Comit\u00e9 Directeur Head Office is situated in Belgium, Brussels to be precise, until recently the country had only two AEGEE antenna, namely AEGEE-Brussel\/Bruxelles and AEGEE-Leuven. On the 28th<\/sup> of November this changed, when a new contact in Louvain-la-Neuve was announced. The AEGEEan spoke to Nada Lakkis to find out more about this new Belgian contact.<\/em>
\n\"\"<\/a>Before we start talking about the contact and its future, first it is time to look at the history of the city of the newest Belgian contact. It all started in Leuven, where the Catholic University at first only provided lectures in French, one of Belgium\u2019s official languages, but started to provide lectures in Dutch, the other official language of Belgium and the language spoken in Leuven in 1930. In 1962 the French and Dutch sections of the university became autonomous, but Flemish nationalists demanded a division of the university and expressed their resentment at privileges given to French-speaking academic. In June 1968 this dispute was solved by turning the Dutch section of the university into the independent Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, while the French section was moved to the French-speaking part of the province, where a campus called Louvain-la-Neuve was founded for the Universit\u00e9 Catholique de Louvain. The city was later build around this campus, although the university still owns the site.<\/p>\n

Seeing that Louvain-la-Neuve is completely built around the university, it would come as no surprise that it is full of students and therefore a good place for future AEGEE members to get in contact with AEGEE-Europe. Nada Lakkis was one of them. She found out about AEGEE through her friend Lana Tomic. \u201cShe told me about all the experiences she had the opportunity to go through with AEGEE and this made me want to join the adventure. I lately found myself passionate by the kind of European dream we have the chance to experience here, during our university time, with the mobility programs and other EU-linked cultural opportunities. This interest made me want to get involved in a student union or project related to Europe, but this is when I discovered that such initiative was sadly lacking in the, however very international, student town of Louvain-la-Neuve.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Nada turned to AEGEE-Brussel\/Bruxelles, who answered her and the idea for the founding of a new contact in Louvain-la-Neuve quickly rose. \u201cAfter discussing it with enthusiastic AEGEE-Brussel\/Bruxelles and Comit\u00e9 Directeur members, I was glad to find support for the plan, which I immediately implemented by finding a motivated team of students\u201d, said Nada. Right now, the core of this team is made up of eight active members, but the complete group consists of fourteen members. Although still a small group, they already have some plans for the upcoming year! \u201cWe would like to start with the organization of conferences in the university, in collaboration with other institutions here, as we think this is also a great way to make the association better known among students\u201d, Nada states. Next to these conferences, the group wants to organize cultural activities and a visit to the European Parliament.<\/p>\n

However, the plans aren\u2019t limited to activities only. \u201cWe are definitely going to use social media, as this is probably the most powerful tool for any kind of promotion nowadays.\u201d The new contact already has some great plans, and luckily also a lot of support from AEGEE-Brussel\/Bruxelles. \u201cI think their enthusiasm and sympathy has somehow been a catalyst for the initiative and now that the contact is created, they\u2019re still willing to assist us. I sincerely appreciate it, and I\u2019m looking forward to meeting new locals too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Written by Svenja van der Tol, AEGEE-Nijmegen<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although the Comit\u00e9 Directeur Head Office is situated in Belgium, Brussels to be precise, until recently the country had only two AEGEE antenna, namely AEGEE-Brussel\/Bruxelles and AEGEE-Leuven. On the 28th of November this changed, when a new contact in Louvain-la-Neuve was announced. The AEGEEan spoke to Nada Lakkis to find out more about this new Belgian contact. Before we start… Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":117,"featured_media":27298,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[4,945],"tags":[1336,560,1054,507,1559],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27297"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/117"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27297"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42445,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27297\/revisions\/42445"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeus.aegee.org\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}