Heraklio (Crete) is re-joining AEGEE network

Today in the last CD meeting we were very happy to approve yet another new born city in AEGEE map. Heraklio, the biggest city in Crete, is joining us - actually re-joining, because they were part of AEGEE already a few years ago, but due to in-activeness disappeared and now are reborn again.

The city of Heraklio, with a population of about 150 000 inhabitants, is the largest city in Crete and one of the largest cities in Greece. It is situated on the northern coast of the island and accounts for most of the economic activity of Crete. It has a large, busy port and an international airport that receives about 15 percent of the total tourist traffic of Greece. The airport is named after Nikos Kazantzakis, the Cretan writer, poet and philosopher who was born in Heraklio.

In Heraklio there are located seven departments of the Faculty of Sciences and Engineering from the University of Crete. It is a known university, both nationally and internationally, for its innovative approach to education, its considerable research activity and dynamic character in international cooperation. The university has more than 10 000 students that give life and energy to the city.

Will EU 2020 strategy be better than Lisbon strategy?

Wednesday, almost at the same time when European Commission were meeting to adopt their proposal for EU 2020 strategy, representatives from different embassies, organisations and companies replied to the invitation of the European Movement International to discuss the economic and social future of Europe in the briefing "EU 2020 Strategy: Raising the Game!"

I did not see a lot of youth organisations in the participants' list - just me, representing AEGEE-Europe, and representative from European Youth Forum. And no wonder, because I do not think that a lot of youth organisations are aware of the outcomes and results of Lisbon strategy and the new EU 2020 strategy.

To give you a short overview without going into too many details, most of the speakers of the briefing admitted that Lisbon strategy has completely failed and it did not reach its aims as it was not implemented in the right way.

However, some of the speakers also pointed out that the new strategy has the same potential to fail as it does not reflect the current situation and state of Europe and the needs of Europeans. Philippe de Buck, Director General of Business Europe, event mentioned that the new strategy should be EU 2014 as it's the end of the mandate of this European Commission and they should be responsible for what has been done. As now it'll be EU 2020, it'll be three different cycles of the Commission, which might create the result that nobody feels responsible for.

For me as a representative of European youth the most interesting was speech of Pat Cox, President of the European Movement, as he noted that 21% of European youth are unemployed, but in some countries (like in Latvia, country where I am coming from) it's even 42,6%! Also the current level of general unemployment now is the highest since 1990ies.

When I remember the recent open call we made to AEGEE network - launching a new project about youth (un)employment, I understand why we had so many applications from interested people who want to take part in the project. This topic really relates to us all, no matter how old we are and from which countries do we come from.

Today we in the headoffice also received a letter from European Youth Forum, who are asking us to contribute and shape the opinion of youth about EU 2020 strategy. Now it's our time to act and raise our voice about things we would like to see implemented as young people!

Role of Cultural Relations

On 2nd of March the weather was beautiful in Brussels, but what was more interesting to watch was the "Conflict Prevention and Resolution: the Role of Cultural Relations" international conference organized by SDA in cooperation with NATO and British Concil . The event took place at the Bibliotheque Solvay and hosted a large number of speakers and international participants.

The event kicked off with the speech of Giles Merritt,Co-Founder & Director of the Security & Defence Agenda, expressing his worries that simple cultural dialog would not be the unique solution in resolving conflicts. Also, a very good question was risen, and that is, what do we understand by culture and how exactly will this apply in the management of current and future conflicts.

Some case studies were presented that seems to give hope on one hand, and on the other to demonstrate that culture plays a key role in every society and can lift or destroy a nation. A very good example of this is the project lead by George Gachara named Picha Mtaani
where street exhibitions and audio-visual presentations were used to raise awareness and to challenge the Kenyan society to reconciliation.

Mr. Giles Merritt concluded, I might say, on a rather concerning note, stating again that we still have a long way until this ideas will be included in actual policies and that EU and NATO create a strong potential force that is not being used at it's most.

This made me think that AEGEE has a huge potential as a promoter of dialog and understanding and done a good job in the past, in my opinion. I know that in times of peace this might sound like just another good-sounding phrase to use when you apply for a YiA grant, but let's not forget that Europe was divided for so much time and only trough projects like this we will be able to not allow the history to repeat.
I believe that this should be a topic to reflect upon, when organizing future CWG events for example and will make for a good set of workshops in your next event.

EPSA Annual Reception

After a long way home (read: Brussels) from EBM Krakow and just a few hours of sleep, on Monday morning Sorin and me went to the European Parliament, where one of our unofficial partner organisations EPSA (European Pharmaceutical Students' Association) was organising their Annual Reception.

Although AEGEE and EPSA do not have any official cooperation, informally we have friendly relationship both on professional level (like giving them tips how to get a headoffice in Brussels) and private level (like partying together). Therefore it was definitely a pleasure to receive their invitation!

We should learn from EPSA in the future and host our receptions in the European Parliament as well, such a good idea! The reception was even opened by Dr. Ioannis Kasoulides, Member of the European Parliament and all of the participants were his official guests in EP that day.

I must admit - for non pharmaceutical students and those who are not working in the field of medicine some parts of the reception were not the most interesting and understandable ones as they were directly related to the industry and professional jargon (like patents, generies and counterfeits).

However, for AEGEE the most useful and interesting part was the networking cocktail after the official debates and sessions, when we could exchange opinions and thoughts not only with EPSA, but also ELSA, ESN and other guests. We talked not only about EPSA last visit in Riga, where they met AEGEE-Ogre people or about the need to go and see the ESN office (as so far we have seen just their house), but also about more important things - like sharing experience about European Voluntary Service (EVS), from which one of EPSA project should definitely benefit. As both AEGEE and EPSA General Assemblies are coming closer, we also shared our interest to go there and to invite them to Agora Leiden.

Thanks for the reception, EPSA!

The UK keeps on rocking - welcome Bath!

Although you all might be waiting stories from EBM Krakow 2010, we'll keep you waiting for the blog post about it for a few days... Because there are other stories from days before EBM, which we did not manage to tell you yet.

Couple days before EBM while all CD members were doing the last preparations for Krakow we also managed to take another important decision - approve a new contact! So let's welcome Bath, a dream which is finally coming true!

"We are a group of students from the University of Bath willing to affiliate to AEGEE-Europe. Although there is a wide range of different societies and student organisations, within University of Bath, representing different cultural and ethnic groups, there isn’t a European students forum where these cultural groups come together, interact, learn and develop successful projects together, therefore we believe that there is field for AEGEE to flourish within this university," they wrote in their motivation letter, adding the information that they are already welcomed by University of Bath Students' Union, being fully recognised and getting full support from the Students Union.

Are you wondering where is Bath? It's a city in the ceremonial county of Somerset in the south west of England (the United Kingdom), not far away from Bristol. There are a bit more than 80 thousand inhabitants in the city. Now Bath is a part of World Heritage Sites and welcomes 3.8 million day visitors to the city each year.

Mail-o-Mania

The general mailing ended just when the Mail Meeting was starting, marking this the ultimate Mail Weekend event in terms of...well...mail.
Christophe , almost not make it due to train cancellations that were affecting the traffic with Brussels, but after some help from his trust-worthy teammate he made it in one piece in the CD house.


During the meeting, the team discussed issues like improving the services that the e-mail service currently offers, adding new ones which might come handy for new and old members as well.

Another tasty point on the agenda was making the AEGEE e-mail world more sunny, spicy and attractive for everybody. AEGEE Lists should become more attractive to locals and users and also board members everywhere should be aware of the advantages of having a list on the AEGEE servers.
The fact that you can easily transfer the ownership rights, thus not having to create multiple groups for each newly elected board and the fact that you will have have a mailing list ended with @aegee.org are only a few things to make you want a list on the AEGEE mail server.

If you feel like you don't know how to (technically) handle all this, worry not, for there is a new quick-guide on it's way, that will give you all the answers you ever needed.

Overall, I can happily say that the meeting was a success and it finally gave us the chance to meet face-to-face which frankly, after so much e-mail exchange was quite welcomed not to mention that now I have a new desk all tanks to the help of my teammates.

Of course we are always looking for ideas and if you feel like you can contribute in any way don't hesitate to write to your e-mail hot-line mail*ATaegeeDOTorg

The members of the Mail Team are:

Clemens Adler AEGEE Karlsruhe
Christophe Berger AEGEE Paris
Richard Maceiczyk AEGEE Mannheim
Dilyan Palauzov AEGEE Karlsruhe
Sorin Vulcu AEGEE Sibiu

(Ab)Using Guests or New Furnitures

This story actually started already during Christmas, when I was all alone in the CD House and noticed, that the fridge is smelling... not very nice. In other words - it didn't work.

To keep the long story short and skip all the steps we needed to go through the last two months to try to repair the old fridge, find out that it is not possible, order and finally get the new fridge, I will simply say - the story is over! After two months of suffering (and living without the big fridge) finally our new fridge arrived on Friday.

Ok, actually it was not all. In the evening when we wanted to start using the fridge there was an unexpected discovery. Instead of opening the doors on the left, they opened only... on the right!

Thanks to Dilyan, Clemens and Richard (guys from Mail Team), in a short amount of time it was fixed and finally we could move to the new fridge.

Help of those guys was needed two days later again, when Sorin decided that he finally wants his working desk in the office as well (as before we had only one desk for CD assistant, not two). Again it didn't take a lot of time for the guys to put all the parts of the table together.

Adding the fact that Dilyan was making breakfast (read: baking pancakes) twice in the weekend for all the CD House, I can just conclude - nice to have such guests! Come back again!